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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.
Alice Mattison
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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Governments
Families
Society
Fear
Government
Exerted
Writing
Directions
Even
Censorship
Way
Offensive
More quotes by Alice Mattison
Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.
Alice Mattison
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.
Alice Mattison
I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
Alice Mattison
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
Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
Alice Mattison
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
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
I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.
Alice Mattison
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
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
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
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
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
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
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
Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
Alice Mattison
You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
Alice Mattison
Telling someone to be confident in the abstract is not going to make it easier for the unconfident writer to actually get herself or himself to the point of being able to put in the upsetting stuff.
Alice Mattison
Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.
Alice Mattison
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
