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I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
Alice Mattison
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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Experience
Write
Persons
Person
Convincingly
Writing
Accurately
Think
Oppression
Thinking
White
People
Black
More quotes by Alice Mattison
I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
Alice Mattison
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
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
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
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
I had never written about what it's like to live the life of a writer, and I had never read a book that combined talking about the life of writing and how you can do it, how you can stand it, how you can emotionally manage it, with the choices that we all make on the page.
Alice Mattison
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.
Alice Mattison
I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.
Alice Mattison
I think you have to remember that writing is hard my first editor used to say that to me.
Alice Mattison
Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
Alice Mattison
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
Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
Alice Mattison
When I've taught writing to five, six, and seven year olds, it's not very different than talking to an adult writer. They're writers then, and when they get to be young teenagers they're not anymore. You might go and talk to them about writing, and they'll be very self-conscious or will have detached themselves from the group.
Alice Mattison
The main thing is to explain to yourself that everybody suffers.
Alice Mattison
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
You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
Alice Mattison
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
Alice Mattison
Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
Alice Mattison
