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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

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Dorothy Allison
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: April 11
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Greenville
South Carolina
Make
Begin
Things
Imagine
World
Understand
Change
Reason
Desperately
Wanted
Motion
Trying
Explain
Something
Reasons

More quotes by Dorothy Allison

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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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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.
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stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.
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Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
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Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
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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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.
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I claimed myself and remade my life.
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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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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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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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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What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.
Dorothy Allison
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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.
Dorothy Allison
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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.
Dorothy Allison
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Why write stories? To join the conversation.
Dorothy Allison
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I have a terrible memory.
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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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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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