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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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Dorothy Allison
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: April 11
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Greenville
South Carolina
Still
Astonishing
Able
Writer
Make
Actually
Fact
Living
Jobs
Facts
Stills
Blunt

More quotes by Dorothy Allison

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Life ain't the movies.
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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I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.
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.
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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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
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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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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
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Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
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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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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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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Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
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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And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.
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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I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)
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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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.
Dorothy Allison