Quote

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

Dorothy Allison

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Dorothy Allison
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: April 11
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Greenville
South Carolina
Two
Made
Coat
Things
Coats
World
Naked
Wear
Sure
Rather
Three

More quotes by Dorothy Allison

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People begin to write in order to create what they have not found and, a little bit, to give something back.
Dorothy Allison
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Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different. Men eat themselves up believing they have to be the thing they have been made. Children go crazy. Really, even children go crazy, believing the shape of the life they must live is as small and mean and broken as they are told.
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What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.
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Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
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fiction is the great lie that tells the truth
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Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.
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Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
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He never said Don't tell your mama. He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what I felt, what scared me and shamed me... (109)
Dorothy Allison
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If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces you to confront your responsibility as narrator, whereas any of the social sciences make you at look the interaction between the storyteller and story.
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Why write stories? To join the conversation.
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And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.
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That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.
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I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.
Dorothy Allison
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I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.
Dorothy Allison
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stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.
Dorothy Allison
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Gravy is the simplest, tastiest, most memory-laden dish I know how to make: a little flour, salt and pepper, crispy bits of whatever meat anchored the meal, a couple of cups of water or milk and slow stirring to break up lumps.
Dorothy Allison
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People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do right because the world doesn't make sense if you don't.
Dorothy Allison
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I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.
Dorothy Allison
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Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
Dorothy Allison
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It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.
Dorothy Allison