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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
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Alice Mattison
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 18
Novelist
New York City
New York
Person
Many
Legal
Different
Helpful
Writing
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Mind
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More quotes by Alice Mattison
Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.
Alice Mattison
Maybe we're stuck with who we are.
Alice Mattison
There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.
Alice Mattison
Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.
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
I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
Alice Mattison
We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves.
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
Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.
Alice Mattison
Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.
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 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
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 don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.
Alice Mattison
I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.
Alice Mattison
I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!
Alice Mattison
You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.
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
When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.
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
