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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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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Great
Writer
Simply
Wonderful
Turns
Straightforwardly
Story
Astonished
Often
Author
Tell
Directly
Stories
Convince

More quotes by Alice Mattison

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Somehow we have to detach from feeling as though money is a quick and easy standard by which we can gauge how well we're doing.
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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.
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In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
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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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Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
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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.
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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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You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
Alice Mattison
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Writers sometimes are paid a great deal of money, but much more frequently they're not paid or are paid only a little bit.
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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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I just like doing it, I like writing.
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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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You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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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.
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Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
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It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.
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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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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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I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.
Alice Mattison