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In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Read
Culture
School
Women
Many
Cultures
Sometimes
Literally
Going
Kept
Learning
More quotes by Alice Mattison
Sometimes I write well when I'm very upset.
Alice Mattison
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
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
We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
Alice Mattison
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
Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
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
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
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
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
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
I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.
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
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
There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.
Alice Mattison
When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.
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
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
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
Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
Alice Mattison
