Ann Beattie Quotes

The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.

When you're good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.

You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel strong. You save people by letting them save you.

Love leaves legacy. How you treated other people, not your wealth or accomplishments, is the most enduring impact you can leave on earth.

He who can not learn to love must flatter.

Building a relationship with the character. It's just like sitting with someone you know. It's very easy to predict when they're going to shake their head or say whatever, but because I'm the author I have to make characters do what I want them to do.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they're doing. even if one complains later on that they were used.

Washington knows that it is not safe to kick people who are down until you find out what their next stop will be.

Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.

And that doesn't cost any money, to have decent relationships and viable situations. What costs money is car chases and shoot-outs, so I always thought that the thing to work on was the characters.

If you keep it," Daneca says, "he'll have his claws in you." Everyone has their claws in me. Everyone.

When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.

A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.

All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them.

The audience can feel the subtleties of the characters.

Even the most powerful human being has a limited sphere of strength. Draw him outside of that sphere and into your own, and his strength will dissipate.

We looked at each other, and I could see in those big reddened eyes that he was not going to scream. He was full of anger - and who could blame him? - but he was no fool. He needed me, and he wanted me here, if only to insult me.

If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.

Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive.

You can't imbibe someone's success by f*cking them.

We often get caught up in our own reactions and forget the vulnerability of the person in front of us.

Get inside her head. Get inside any character's head and ask what they want in this scene. And if you work from the perspective of what they want, there's not going to be any wrong answer. There's going to be some boring answers, but none of them are going to be wrong. As long as she has agency, then you're on the right track.

The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.

That's just the point: an honest and sensitive man opens his heart, and the man of business goes on eating - and then he eats you up.