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

More quotes by Alice Mattison

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You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
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We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
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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.
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Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes indirect style and varying chronology is great, but quite often I've seen it be just something that gets in the way. It turns out when I talk to the writer that she or he, and more often it's a woman, that she's worried.
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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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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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Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
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I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
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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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I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
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I just like doing it, I like writing.
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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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.
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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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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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The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
Alice Mattison