Quote

If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.

Ann Beattie

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ann Beattie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: September 8
Novelist
Professor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Six
Trouble
Called
Stories
Book
Think
Thinking
Favorite

More quotes by Ann Beattie

Image
I've spent my life supporting myself.
Ann Beattie
Image
It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
Ann Beattie
Image
I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
Ann Beattie
Image
I am not alone in bearing grudges against reviewers who have doomed a book's chances because they've missed the point, the tone, everything.
Ann Beattie
Image
Much of what happens in Love Always is really from overheard conversations in the Russian Tea Room. It's an improvisation of the way certain Hollywood agents think and talk to each other.
Ann Beattie
Image
People forget years and remember moments.
Ann Beattie
Image
Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
Ann Beattie
Image
I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.
Ann Beattie
Image
It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.
Ann Beattie
Image
Clichés so often befall vain people.
Ann Beattie
Image
It's not about having things figured out, or about communicating with other people, trying to make them understand what you understand. It's about a chicken dinner at a drive-in. A soft pillow. Things that don't need explaining.
Ann Beattie
Image
Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.
Ann Beattie
Image
Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.
Ann Beattie
Image
I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie
Image
There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.
Ann Beattie
Image
I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.
Ann Beattie
Image
You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
Ann Beattie
Image
Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.
Ann Beattie
Image
What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
Ann Beattie
Image
Italics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can't help but consider irony.
Ann Beattie