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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
Even murderers, I suppose, experience the loss of car keys the way the rest of us do. I mean, how can they not? Once you make this person scramble around the house looking for her car keys and finally find… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
Every once in a while someone says, 'You can't really learn anything, if you're really a writer then you wouldn't need to do it.'… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
“When a man I like touches my arm or my hair, I want to know if he'll touch the center of me, and whatever… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
When I've taught writing to five, six, and seven year olds, it's not very different than talking to an adult writer. They're writers then,… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
I find that I get very excited about what my students are up to and that I get to be the hurdle they need… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person. — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves. — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice. — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
We're always inventing, even if we're making someone who's fairly close to ourselves. — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
