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

Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.
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 different way than they do now.
Ann Beattie

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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