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fiction is the great lie that tells the truth

Dorothy Allison

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Dorothy Allison
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: April 11
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Greenville
South Carolina
Lying
Truth
Great
Tells
Fiction

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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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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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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)
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I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.
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Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
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Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different...I claimed myself and remade my life. Only when I knew I belonged to myself completely did I become capable of giving myself to another, of finding joy in desire, pleasure in our love, power in this body no one else owns.
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I claimed myself and remade my life.
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.
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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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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.
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I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)
Dorothy Allison
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It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.
Dorothy Allison
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I have a terrible memory.
Dorothy Allison
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It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I live in the here and now.
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What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.
Dorothy Allison
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Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.
Dorothy Allison
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Hunger makes you restless. you dream about food - not just any food, but perfect food, the best food, magical meals, famous and awe-inspiring, the one piece of meat, the exact taste of buttery corn, tomatoes so ripe they split and sweeten the air, beans so crisp they snap between the teeth, gravy like mother's milk singing to your bloodstream.
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.
Dorothy Allison
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The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.
Dorothy Allison
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Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Dorothy Allison