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We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.
Alice Mattison
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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Think
Imprisoned
Thinking
Cultures
People
Killed
Culture
Stills
Still
Many
Writing
Whipped
More quotes by Alice Mattison
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.
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
Little children are all writers.
Alice Mattison
There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.
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
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
I think you have to remember that writing is hard my first editor used to say that to me.
Alice Mattison
It's hard to say which of us is luckier, the ones who go through long periods when they can't write or the ones who can write pretty easily.
Alice Mattison
I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
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
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
We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in 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 people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.
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
In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.
Alice Mattison
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
I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.
Alice Mattison
Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
Alice Mattison
It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who is different.
Alice Mattison
