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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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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
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Helping
Diversify
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Helps
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Novel
More quotes by Alice Mattison
Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
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
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 actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose.
Alice Mattison
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
Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
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'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
I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
Alice Mattison
There seems to be a tremendous desire among many people now to know authors and how they work, to know what's autobiographical and what isn't.
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
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
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
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
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 think you have to remember that writing is hard my first editor used to say that to me.
Alice Mattison
I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression.
Alice Mattison
There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.
Alice Mattison
I just like doing it, I like writing.
Alice Mattison
