Quotes by Ann Beattie

About Ann Beattie:

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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

...every life is like a snowflake: individual existences might look identical from afar, but to understand one´s own eternally mysterious uniqueness one had only to plot the mysteries of one´s own snowflake.

Ann Beattie

It's such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can't find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people.

Ann Beattie

...when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also are inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was...this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of a...

Ann Beattie

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.

Ann Beattie

We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction

Ann Beattie

Immersing oneself in the problems of a book is a good way to keep from thinking of love.

Ann Beattie

...the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.

Ann Beattie

Despite the loss they were suffering, they'd both relaxed - as people do when they realize they've run out of chances for happiness

Ann Beattie

Women kill themselves because they hope to gain something," said Kadife. "Men kill themselves because they've lost hope of gaining anything.

Ann Beattie

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

Clichés so often befall vain people.

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 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

I feel that these stories are being written to articulate certain confusions and disappointments, and I do mean to shake up the reader, and I do hope they're on target.

Ann Beattie

I've spent my life supporting myself.

Ann Beattie

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

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

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 differen...

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 gratifying that it does; I love to give readings.

Ann Beattie

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

Ann Beattie

Author Bio

  • NameAnn Beattie
  • DescriptionShort story writer, novelist, professor
  • BornSeptember 8, 1947
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist; Author
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship