Quote

I had never written about what it's like to live the life of a writer, and I had never read a book that combined talking about the life of writing and how you can do it, how you can stand it, how you can emotionally manage it, with the choices that we all make on the page.

Alice Mattison

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Never
Written
Life
Choices
Combined
Like
Talking
Emotionally
Read
Page
Live
Manage
Book
Pages
Writing
Writer
Make
Stand

More quotes by Alice Mattison

Image
Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
Alice Mattison
Image
I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
Alice Mattison
Image
Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
Alice Mattison
Image
Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
Alice Mattison
Image
Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
Alice Mattison
Image
Sometimes people want to know how to write a story from the point of view of a murderer and make her sympathetic. I think the answer is that you start by having her look for her car keys, because everybody knows what it's like.
Alice Mattison
Image
There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.
Alice Mattison
Image
I think the difference between writing as someone and writing for them is that when you write for someone, you take on a kind of political burden or message, which I don't think we have the right to do.
Alice Mattison
Image
We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.
Alice Mattison
Image
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
Image
Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.
Alice Mattison
Image
We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
Alice Mattison
Image
Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
Alice Mattison
Image
Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.
Alice Mattison
Image
I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
Alice Mattison
Image
When I've taught writing to five, six, and seven year olds, it's not very different than talking to an adult writer. They're writers then, and when they get to be young teenagers they're not anymore. You might go and talk to them about writing, and they'll be very self-conscious or will have detached themselves from the group.
Alice Mattison
Image
We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
Alice Mattison
Image
Inevitably we start by thinking that if our work is any good, we'll get money. It's as we would if you started up a business or if you work in another profession.
Alice Mattison
Image
The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
Alice Mattison
Image
Maybe we're stuck with who we are.
Alice Mattison