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

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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Give
Innocent
Giving
Characters
Make
Trouble
Story
Poor
Order
Stories
Undeserving
Character
Badness

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We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
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Maybe we're stuck with who we are.
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I find that I get very excited about what my students are up to and that I get to be the hurdle they need to jump over.
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The main thing is to explain to yourself that everybody suffers.
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I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
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I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
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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.
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Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
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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.
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Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
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Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.
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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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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!
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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.
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I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.
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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.
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You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
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When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.
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I think you have to remember that writing is hard my first editor used to say that to me.
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