Quote

Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.

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
Writing
Experiences
Imagination
Anyone
Write
Someone

More quotes by Alice Mattison

Image
I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
Alice Mattison
Image
Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
Alice Mattison
Image
We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
Alice Mattison
Image
We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
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.
Alice Mattison
Image
I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
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
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
Image
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
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
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
Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
Alice Mattison
Image
I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
Alice Mattison
Image
I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
Alice Mattison
Image
I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison