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

Ann Beattie

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

More quotes by Ann Beattie

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I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
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People forget years and remember moments.
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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.
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Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.
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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.
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Clichés so often befall vain people.
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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
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Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.
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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.
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While I would agree that I write about serious subjects, and that they're not necessarily the most pleasant subjects or even the most pleasant people, as a writer I just think about the humorous aspects of these things - that's what keeps me going when I'm writing a story.
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I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
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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
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The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
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I could name a few songs and say exactly what summer they came out and what boy I thought I was in love with when I was fourteen years old, but I think that music used to be really more a part of the culture when people went out dancing in a different way than they do now.
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Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
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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.
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It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
Ann Beattie
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I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.
Ann Beattie
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You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.
Ann Beattie
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You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
Ann Beattie