Alice Mattison Quotes

Quotes about:

• I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Thinking, Two

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Style, Way, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I began to see, again and again, stories that were first confusing and second where the emotional impact was muted because the big scene came before the explanation of what was going on. There was a reverse chronological order as well as a concealment of what exactly was going on. I think often that comes out of the fear of being boring, and sometimes I think it's just an attempt to seem clever.

  Alice Mattison

  Clever, Emotional, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Editors, Differences

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

  Alice Mattison

  School, Culture, Sometimes

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Littles, Sometimes, Deals

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Get Money, Profession

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Long, Periods

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe we're stuck with who we are.

  Alice Mattison

  Who We Are, Stuck

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I don't have the courage not to write all the time.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are.

  Alice Mattison

  Children, Years, Accepted

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, White, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Mirrors, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

  Alice Mattison

  Smart, Writing, Belief

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past.

  Alice Mattison

  Past, America

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Censorship is all around us, I don't think it's innate.

  Alice Mattison

  Thinking, Censorship, Innate

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Feelings, Gauges, Easy

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• This is true in other fields, too, that a legal aid lawyer gets a whole lot less money than a Hollywood lawyer who handles the estates of celebrities. Maybe the legal aid lawyer is doing something better, though, and maybe they're happier. It's not a completely unheard of idea, but I do think we have to remind ourselves at times to look for satisfaction in other ways.

  Alice Mattison

  Thinking, Ideas, Hollywood

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Writing, Long

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I think you have to remember that writing is hard; my first editor used to say that to me.

  Alice Mattison

  Writing, Thinking, Editors

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• The main thing is to explain to yourself that everybody suffers.

  Alice Mattison

  Suffering

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Mind, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I don't really like to tell people to get out drugs.

  Alice Mattison

  People, Drug

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Needs, Students, Excited

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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