Quote

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

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

More quotes by Dorothy Allison

Image
People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do right because the world doesn't make sense if you don't.
Dorothy Allison
Image
Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
Dorothy Allison
Image
I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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
Image
Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
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
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
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
I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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
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
It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.
Dorothy Allison
Image
What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.
Dorothy Allison
Image
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Dorothy Allison
Image
I claimed myself and remade my life.
Dorothy Allison
Image
Why write stories? To join the conversation.
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
Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
Dorothy Allison
Image
I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.
Dorothy Allison
Image
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