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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.

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
Tone
Alone
Grudges
Chance
Reviewers
Point
Grudge
Everything
Bearing
Book
Missed
Doomed
Chances

More quotes by Ann Beattie

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Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
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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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If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.
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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.
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Also minimalism is a term that all of us who share so little in common and who are lumped together as minimalists are not terribly happy with.
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Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
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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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When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.
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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.
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Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.
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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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It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
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It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.
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What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
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Clouds are poems, and the most moving poems linger on the blackboard so long, written in cursive so lovely, they also exist inside our fingertips. We never really erase them at the end of the lesson.
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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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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.
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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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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie
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Clichés so often befall vain people.
Ann Beattie