Ann Beattie famous quotes

People forget years and remember moments.
-- Ann Beattie

#Years #People #Remember

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

#Writing #Rocks #Stories

Clichés so often befall vain people.
-- Ann Beattie

#People #Vain

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

#Home #Writing #Adventure

the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
-- Ann Beattie

#Marriage #Children #Real

The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
-- Ann Beattie

#Style #Admiration #Proportion

I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
-- Ann Beattie

#Writing #Thinking #Mysterious

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
-- Ann Beattie

#Limits #Assuming

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

#Character #Thinking #People

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.
-- Ann Beattie

#Together #Littles #Common

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.
-- Ann Beattie

#Humorous #Writing #Thinking

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.
-- Ann Beattie

#Summer #Song #Boys

I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
-- Ann Beattie

#Thinking #Serious #Bleak

I've spent my life supporting myself.
-- Ann Beattie

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

#Book #Thinking #Stories

It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
-- Ann Beattie

#Thinking #Interesting #Daily Life

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

#Thinking #Tea #Hollywood

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

#Character #Men #Interesting

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

#Different #Might #Way

I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
-- Ann Beattie

#Hair #Long #Disadvantages

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

#Glowing #Males #Admire

It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order.
-- Ann Beattie

#Order #Diaries #Problem

Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.
-- Ann Beattie

#Men #Way

Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
-- Ann Beattie

#Dramatic

You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
-- Ann Beattie

#Character #Trouble

What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
-- Ann Beattie

#Grace #Aim

Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.
-- Ann Beattie

#Falling In Love #Fall #Were Meant To Be

It's gratifying that it does; I love to give readings.
-- Ann Beattie

#Giving Up #Reading #Doe

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.
-- Ann Beattie

#Photography #Teaching #Class

When I lived in New York, not only did I have safety locks on the door but I had the music going, keeping the city at a distance, trying to find creative time and peace and so forth.
-- Ann Beattie

#New York #Distance #Doors

It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.
-- Ann Beattie

#Depressing #Cynical #Said

I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
-- Ann Beattie

#Names #People

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

#Helping #Irony #Wonderful

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

#Self #People #Sound

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

#People #Trying #Needs

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.
-- Ann Beattie

#Moving #Clouds #Long