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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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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Close
Making
Someone
Even
Always
Inventing
Fairly

More quotes by 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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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 really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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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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
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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.
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'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 just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
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Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
Alice Mattison
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I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
Alice Mattison
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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
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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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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
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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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Little children are all writers.
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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Writers sometimes are paid a great deal of money, but much more frequently they're not paid or are paid only a little bit.
Alice Mattison
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There are so many different ways, most of them helpful and legal, to get yourself into a state of mind where writing is possible. It's going to be different for each person.
Alice Mattison
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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
Alice Mattison