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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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Dorothy Allison
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: April 11
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Greenville
South Carolina
Shamed
Mama
Scared
Anyone
Felt
Tell
Never

More quotes by Dorothy Allison

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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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Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.
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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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.
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.
Dorothy Allison
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Delia picked at the raw sores of her conscience...Drunk or sober, Delia lived in the small town in her heart, ignoring the world in which all her love had turned to grief.
Dorothy Allison
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Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
Dorothy Allison
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When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.
Dorothy Allison
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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.
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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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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I have a terrible memory.
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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Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That’s all you need to know in this life…just the certainty that God’s got His eye on you, that He knows what you are made of, what you need to grow on. Why,questioning’s a sin, it’s pointless. He will show you your path in His own good time. And long as I remember that, I’m fine.
Dorothy Allison
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Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
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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Twenty years after we had left so fierce and proud, we were all right back where we had started, yoked to each other and the same old drama.
Dorothy Allison
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Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.
Dorothy Allison
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I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.
Dorothy Allison
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Why write stories? To join the conversation.
Dorothy Allison