Ayana Mathis Quotes

Quotes about:

• I try to find the beauty in things. On dark days, I sit in my armchair looking at clouds and I am awed at how rain is made.

  Ayana Mathis

  Rain, Dark, Clouds

  FaceBook post by Ayana Mathis from May 14, 2017

  6 Copy quote

• I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access.

  Ayana Mathis

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Half of what's wrong with people today is that they ain't got no place to go that makes them peaceful.

  Ayana Mathis

  People, Peaceful, Half

  4 Copy quote

• One of the things that writers worry about is finding a voice. I don't think it's a thing that you find so much as it is something that comes to you, or that presents itself.

  Ayana Mathis

  Thinking, Voice, Worry

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Even if you don't feel like sitting down to write or working on that big proposal, or whatever it is, just show up anyhow and the rest will follow.

  Ayana Mathis

  Writing, Sitting Down, Proposal

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• If there had never been the Great Migration there would never have been jazz, there would never have been Michelle Obama. A lot of amazing black people exist in this country because of the Great Migration. That's nation-building.

  Ayana Mathis

  Country, People, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• You have to find a way of shutting the future out and focusing on the writing. One of the problems I'll have with writing my second book is getting back into a situation where I think about the words on the page rather than the publishing industry, or success, or any kind of readership I may now have. I'll have to do what writers do, which is focus on the story and nothing else.

  Ayana Mathis

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• Fiction writing is an act of imagination, lived experience is secondary in many ways, writing a novel really is all about inventing worlds and people.

  Ayana Mathis

  Writing, People, Imagination

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Voice isn't fixed or unmalleable, it adapts to the characters you are creating and the story being told. I suppose in some way that's true in life - a little flexibility goes a long way.

  Ayana Mathis

  Character, Voice, Creating

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• There were class differences among black people then and there are class differences among black people now. There is still an assumption among many people in American society that being black is its own class, a blanket class. That, I believe, is an erroneous and deeply offensive view.

  Ayana Mathis

  Believe, People, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Racial terrorism affects the lives of white people and black people and everyone, everything. Racism is contaminating. It can affect the dogs in the street. So the process of beginning to rid the country of prejudice was in itself a kind of nation-building.

  Ayana Mathis

  Country, Dog, Racism

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• I think a lot about race and the burdens of representation. There's an idea that because I'm writing a book set around the time of the Great Migration, and happen to be black, I'm trying to write a definitive account of the Great Migration, the so-called "black experience." That's not what I'm doing, and it can be frustrating.

  Ayana Mathis

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• My book has a pre - civil rights setting with a post - civil rights sensibility. I believe less and less that there is something called "The Black Experience," though undoubtedly there was one once.

  Ayana Mathis

  Believe, Book, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• There's a stereotype that to be a strong black woman is to be strong about being black.

  Ayana Mathis

  Strong, Black, Stereotype

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm wary of being put in boxes. But at the same time, it's important that I embrace my identity as a writer who happens to be gay, and in my own way I do that.

  Ayana Mathis

  Gay, Important, Identity

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• In America, and no doubt elsewhere, we have such a tendency toward the segregation of cultural products. This is a black book, this is a gay book, this is an Asian book. It can be counterproductive both to the literary enterprise and to people's reading, because it can set up barriers. Readers may think, "Oh, I'm a straight man from Atlanta and I'm white, so I won't enjoy that book because it's by a gay black woman in Brooklyn." They're encouraged to think that, in a way, because of the categorization in the media.

  Ayana Mathis

  Reading, Book, Gay

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I couldn't imagine a book with many characters in it and one of them not being gay. It would have felt like a glaring and problematic omission for me. But I also wanted to write that character as a person, not just a gay person.

  Ayana Mathis

  Book, Writing, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and that it's all really mystical and mysterious. In reality, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it.

  Ayana Mathis

  Art, Reality, Thinking

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

• There is still an assumption among many people that to be black is to be lower class. In the last fifteen to twenty years, perhaps even further back than that, there's also been an explosion of a very wealthy black class in the United States, but those people are often treated as special cases: they're athletes, entertainers. Jay-Z. Basketball players. The country metabolizes the fact these rich black people exist, but it seems only to reinforce the idea that every other black person is limping along in poverty.

  Ayana Mathis

  Basketball, Country, Athlete

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• There is a forgotten black middle class in America - a group which is huge but underrepresented in the media and in art. It's difficult to talk about these things, because it forces one to talk in generalities, but that's my view. I do think the idea of a blanket class for black people is unfortunately still present.

  Ayana Mathis

  Art, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The correlations between real life experience and the storylines in novels are never as direct or simple as they might seem.

  Ayana Mathis

  Real, Simple, Might

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• The critics and the reviewers are more frightening than anything else!

  Ayana Mathis

  Critics, Frightening, Reviewers

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• One thing I am learning is to slow down. Multitasking is great, but I when try to do everything at warp speed I just end up with typos and stress.

  Ayana Mathis

  Stress, Trying, Multitasking

  "Twelve Tribes of Hattie Author Ayana Mathis Talks Fiction, Family, and (Sometimes) Faking It". Interview with Meredith Turits, www.glamour.com. December 17, 2012.

  31 Copy quote

• I really, deeply believe in the primacy of character. I believe that my job as a writer is to put a believable human being on a page.

  Ayana Mathis

  Jobs, Believe, Character

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• I've been writing all my life. Even though I didn't have sort of careerist aspirations as a writer, it was very much my identity.

  Ayana Mathis

  Writing, Identity, Aspiration

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

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