Ann Beattie Quotes

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me.

My books come to me in images, and sometimes the image is at the beginning of the book, and sometimes it's simply a flash somewhere in the middle.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

Do you love this story? If you love it, then you've got to write it.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.

I write short stories. I write every day.

As a kid, I lived almost entirely inside books, and eventually the books started returning the favor. A lot of my internal world feels like an anthology, or a library. It's eclectic and disorganized, but I can browse in it, and that hugely shapes both what and how I write.

There are a few really fantastic stories left, and that kind of gives you some inspiration to find even new ones.

I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I was writing a story, and it took me years. And when I finished, a friend of mine had the idea that the story should be read as a monologue in a theater.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

Collections aren't really planned. I just keep writing short pieces until I have enough for a collection.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

I really have reached a point where I can write a book about all of this.

When I write, it's like watching a movie in my head.

I was 12. Our, teacher made us write an autobiography and I realised that I wasn't very interesting. I began to make things up, and that's when I thought maybe I was a writer, or at least a fiction writer.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

It's all about letting the story take over.