Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Thinking
Third
Thirds
Novel
Eyes
Point
Eye
Certain
Think
Draft

More quotes by Alice Mattison

Image
Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
Alice Mattison
Image
Maybe we're stuck with who we are.
Alice Mattison
Image
The making of fiction takes literally what is suggested by our imagination.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
Image
I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
Image
Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
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
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.
Alice Mattison
Image
I don't have the courage not to write all the time.
Alice Mattison
Image
You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
Alice Mattison
Image
Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
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
Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.
Alice Mattison
Image
I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
Alice Mattison
Image
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
Image
You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
Alice Mattison
Image
I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
Alice Mattison