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Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.

Alice Mattison

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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Sometimes
Writing
Upset
Write
Wells
Well

More quotes by Alice Mattison

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I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
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I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
Alice Mattison
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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
Alice Mattison
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There seems to be a tremendous desire among many people now to know authors and how they work, to know what's autobiographical and what isn't.
Alice Mattison
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You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating and intricate style that might not appeal to as many readers but will be incredibly meaningful to the readers you have. Truly, that's as wonderful if not more wonderful.
Alice Mattison
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Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
Alice Mattison
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I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
Alice Mattison
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I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!
Alice Mattison
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You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
Alice Mattison
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I think a day in your life on which nothing bad happens may be a wonderful day, but it probably isn't going to be the basis of a story.
Alice Mattison
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The main thing is to explain to yourself that everybody suffers.
Alice Mattison
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You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
Alice Mattison
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I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
Alice Mattison
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I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.
Alice Mattison
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We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
Alice Mattison
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Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.
Alice Mattison
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I've been astonished how often, when I convince a writer to tell a story more straightforwardly and to tell it more simply and directly, it turns out that this author is great and the story is wonderful.
Alice Mattison
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I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.
Alice Mattison
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Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
Alice Mattison
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I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
Alice Mattison