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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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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Years
Novel
People
Write
Two
Best
Might
Take
Whole
Revise
Writing
Secretive

More quotes by 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.
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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
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I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
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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.
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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.
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We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
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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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I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
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I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
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Maybe we're stuck with who we are.
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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!
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You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
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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.
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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
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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.
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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.
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
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Little children are all writers.
Alice Mattison
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We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in 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