Quotes from Ann Beattie

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am not alone in bearing grudges against reviewers who have doomed a book's chances because they've missed the point, the tone, everything.

Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.

The admiration of another writer's work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.