You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident. — Alice Mattison Confidence Copy Share Image
Somehow we have to detach from feeling as though money is a quick and easy standard by which we can gauge how… — 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
I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it. — Alice Mattison Help Copy Share Image
I don't think a white person can write accurately and convincingly about what black people experience of oppression. — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too. — Alice Mattison Being smart Copy Share Image
I actually think it's sometimes easier for the control freaks to let loose. — Alice Mattison Control freak Copy Share Image
Certainly children are being encouraged far more than they were seventy-five years ago and are more accepted as they are. — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts. — Alice Mattison Books 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.… — Alice Mattison Chronology Copy Share Image
We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has… — Alice Mattison Books Copy Share Image
There are so many different ways, most of them helpful and legal, to get yourself into a state of mind where writing… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
It's a scary thing for fiction writers, when you're always writing from the point of view both as and for someone who… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
Telling someone to be confident in the abstract is not going to make it easier for the unconfident writer to actually get… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
Sometimes people want to know how to write a story from the point of view of a murderer and make her sympathetic.… — 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 Choices 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… — Alice Mattison Book Copy Share Image
If you have a character stand up and put on her shoes and open the door, in order to do that, you're… — Alice Mattison Character 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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
I began to see, again and again, stories that were first confusing and second where the emotional impact was muted because the… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
This is true in other fields, too, that a legal aid lawyer gets a whole lot less money than a Hollywood lawyer… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
I remember I had had one woman who had three or four kids, and some of them were having problems. I said,… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
I had never written about what it's like to live the life of a writer, and I had never read a book… — Alice Mattison Book 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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
For some people, it's very easy to be spontaneous and they can pour out the most wonderful stuff. But it's really hard… — 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… — Alice Mattison Books 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… — Alice Mattison Copy Share Image
We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think. — Alice Mattison Culture Copy Share Image
Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs. — Alice Mattison Community Copy Share Image
Truly things are better in general now, in America, than in the past. — Alice Mattison America 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 Books Copy Share Image
