Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie
Ann Beattieis an American novelist and short story writer. 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 September 1947
CountryUnited States of America
I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
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.
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.
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.
I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
I've spent my life supporting myself.
If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.
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.
the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.