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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
Wanted
Motion
Trying
Explain
Something
Reasons
Make
Begin
Things
Imagine
World
Understand
Change
Reason
Desperately

More quotes by Dorothy Allison

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I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.
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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.
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Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.
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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.
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Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
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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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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.
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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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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 worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209)
Dorothy Allison
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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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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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It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.
Dorothy Allison
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Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
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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.
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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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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Why write stories? To join the conversation.
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