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Life ain't the movies.

Dorothy Allison

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Dorothy Allison
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: April 11
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Greenville
South Carolina
Movies
Life

More quotes by 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 did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.
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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Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Dorothy Allison
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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.
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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Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
Dorothy Allison
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Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
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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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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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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I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.
Dorothy Allison
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It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.
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
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I have a terrible memory.
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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stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.
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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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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One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.
Dorothy Allison