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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

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I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.
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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)
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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)
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What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.
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I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.
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Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
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Why write stories? To join the conversation.
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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.
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I claimed myself and remade my life.
Dorothy Allison