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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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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Authors
Tremendous
Among
Desire
Seems
Many
Work
People
Autobiographical

More quotes by Alice Mattison

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Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
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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I think we need to develop the courage to write from the viewpoint of people who may seem quite different from ourselves, who might have a different sexual orientation or a different race or a different ethnicity.
Alice Mattison
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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
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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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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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I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
Alice Mattison
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I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
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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It's hard to say which of us is luckier, the ones who go through long periods when they can't write or the ones who can write pretty easily.
Alice Mattison
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We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.
Alice Mattison
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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.
Alice Mattison
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There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.
Alice Mattison
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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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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 think you have to remember that writing is hard my first editor used to say that to me.
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 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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In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison