Quote

Why write stories? To join the conversation.

Dorothy Allison

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dorothy Allison
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: April 11
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Greenville
South Carolina
Join
Conversation
Write
Stories
Writing

More quotes by Dorothy Allison

Image
Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.
Dorothy Allison
Image
I claimed myself and remade my life.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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
Image
Life ain't the movies.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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
Image
I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)
Dorothy Allison
Image
I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.
Dorothy Allison
Image
It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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
Image
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
Image
fiction is the great lie that tells the truth
Dorothy Allison
Image
And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.
Dorothy Allison
Image
People begin to write in order to create what they have not found and, a little bit, to give something back.
Dorothy Allison
Image
Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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
Image
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.
Dorothy Allison
Image
It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.
Dorothy Allison
Image
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.
Dorothy Allison
Image
One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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