Ann Beattie

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

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. ”

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

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

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. ”

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. ”

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

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

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

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. ”