Quote

We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in a story.

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
Giving
Characters
Make
Trouble
Story
Poor
Order
Stories
Undeserving
Character
Badness
Give
Innocent

More quotes by Alice Mattison

Image
You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
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
Maybe we're stuck with who we are.
Alice Mattison
Image
We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
Alice Mattison
Image
I get to a certain point, and I think in a novel it's about the third draft, when I want other eyes on it.
Alice Mattison
Image
I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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
If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're imagining her shoes and her clothes and her house and her door. The character becomes more real. But once you've done that, you can probably just get it all across with a couple of details.
Alice Mattison
Image
Sometimes indirect style and varying chronology is great, but quite often I've seen it be just something that gets in the way. It turns out when I talk to the writer that she or he, and more often it's a woman, that she's worried.
Alice Mattison
Image
Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
Alice Mattison
Image
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
Image
I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Little children are all writers.
Alice Mattison
Image
Telling someone to be confident in the abstract is not going to make it easier for the unconfident writer to actually get herself or himself to the point of being able to put in the upsetting stuff.
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
I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
Alice Mattison