Ann Beattie Quotes

• There are things that get whispered about that writers are there to overhear.

  Ann Beattie

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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

• Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.

  Ann Beattie

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Well, a few years ago I think I could have given you a more enthusiastic answer about that but in the last few years, for the first time in my life, I really haven’t listened to much music. I used to work with music on and now I don’t.

  Ann Beattie

• 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

• 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

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

  Ann Beattie

• 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

• It’s often been said that I’m an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I’ve never known what to make of that.

  Ann Beattie

• It’s interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.

  Ann Beattie

• It’s gratifying that it does; I love to give readings.

  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

• I’ve spent my life supporting myself.

  Ann Beattie

• I’ve been in this business for a long time, and I no longer think that anything that I do by way of clarification is ever going to eradicate the mistakes.

  Ann Beattie

• I think that I’m serious, but I don’t think that I’m inordinately bleak.

  Ann Beattie

• I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.

  Ann Beattie

• 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

Ann Beattie (28)

Birth:	8th September, 1947
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist, Professor, Writer

About

Ann Beattie is an American short story writer and novelist. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to that of Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike. She holds an undergraduate degree from American University and a master's degree from the University of Connecticut.

Related Authors

• Michael Arlen
• Pearl Cleage
• Dino Buzzati
• Angela Carter
• George MacDonald Fraser
• Boris Pasternak
• Barbara Taylor Bradford
• Carmen Sylva
• Lilith Saintcrow
• Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 29th March

Births

• 1967 - Michel Hazanavicius
• 1971 - Robert Gibbs
• 1927 - Martin Fleischmann
• 1874 - Lou Henry Hoover
• 1961 - Michael Winterbottom

Deaths

• 1991 - Lee Atwater
• 1912 - Robert Falcon Scott
• 1878 - Mark Hopkins Jr.
• 1982 - Nathan F Twining
• 1934 - Otto Hermann Kahn