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Little children are all writers.

Alice Mattison

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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Children
Writers
Littles
Little

More quotes by 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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Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
Alice Mattison
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Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
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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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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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.
Alice Mattison
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Somehow we have to detach from feeling as though money is a quick and easy standard by which we can gauge how well we're doing.
Alice Mattison
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I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
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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.
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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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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Maybe we're stuck with who we are.
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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I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
Alice Mattison
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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.
Alice Mattison
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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.
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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Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
Alice Mattison
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When I've taught writing to five, six, and seven year olds, it's not very different than talking to an adult writer. They're writers then, and when they get to be young teenagers they're not anymore. You might go and talk to them about writing, and they'll be very self-conscious or will have detached themselves from the group.
Alice Mattison
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Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
Alice Mattison