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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
Whole
Revise
Writing
Secretive
Years
Novel
People
Write
Two
Best
Might
Take

More quotes by 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 don't have the courage not to write all the time.
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.
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I think you have to remember that writing is hard my first editor used to say that to me.
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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.
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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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I find that I get very excited about what my students are up to and that I get to be the hurdle they need to jump over.
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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In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
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Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.
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.
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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 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
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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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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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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
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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
Alice Mattison
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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
Alice Mattison
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Little children are all writers.
Alice Mattison
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Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
Alice Mattison