Dorothy Allison Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.

  Dorothy Allison

  Wall, Pain, Fall

  12 Copy quote

• Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

  Dorothy Allison

  Lying, Writing, Fiction

  Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.117, Open Road Media

  17 Copy quote

• stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.

  Dorothy Allison

  Heart, Stories, World

  Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.58, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems. Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time. And I loved her for that.

  Dorothy Allison

  Girl, Mean, Writing

  Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.36, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.

  Dorothy Allison

  Writing, Libertarian, Boring

  5 Copy quote

• I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

  Dorothy Allison

  Change, World, Revelations

  Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.121, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

• she got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant

  Dorothy Allison

  Balance, Friendly, Tongue

  Dorothy Allison (2005). “Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel”, p.18, Penguin

  5 Copy 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

  Trying, World, Imagine

  Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.18, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• Delia picked at the raw sores of her conscience...Drunk or sober, Delia lived in the small town in her heart, ignoring the world in which all her love had turned to grief.

  Dorothy Allison

  Grief, Heart, Drunk

  5 Copy quote

• Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different..." from Two or Three Things i Know For Sure

  Dorothy Allison

  Two, Knowing, Different

  4 Copy quote

• It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.

  Dorothy Allison

  Fun, People, Fiction

  Dorothy Allison, Mae Miller Claxton (2012). “Conversations with Dorothy Allison”, p.119, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.

  Dorothy Allison

  Writing, People, Body

  Dorothy Allison, Mae Miller Claxton (2012). “Conversations with Dorothy Allison”, p.73, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained. And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry.

  Dorothy Allison

  Appreciation, Children, Mean

  Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.14, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Writing, Responsibility

  "A Conversation with Dorothy Allison". Interview with Renée Olander, www.awpwriter.org. October 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.

  Dorothy Allison

  Mother, Pieces, Stolen

  Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.43, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• I don't believe that there is any true friendship without a bond of honor, and the honor in friendship is the respect you give the other that she also gives you.

  Dorothy Allison

  True Friend, Believe, Giving

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Girl, Dry, Littles

  5 Copy quote

• One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

  Dorothy Allison

  Class, Backgrounds, Contempt

  Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.17, Open Road Media

  12 Copy quote

• I put on the page a third look at what I've seen in life - the reinvented experience of a cross-eyed working-class lesbian, addicted to violence, language and hope, who has made the decision to live, is determined to live, on the page and on the street, for me and mine.

  Dorothy Allison

  Determination, Class, Decision

  Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.19, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

• Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time.

  Dorothy Allison

  Girlfriend, Quality, Leisure

  Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.36, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

• I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life - the life we make together. Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.

  Dorothy Allison

  Heart, Warrior, Turtles

  6 Copy quote

• I wanted to start over completely, to begin again as new people with nothing of the past left over. I wanted to run away from who we had been seen to be, who we had been... It's the first thing I think of when trouble comes - the geographic solution. Change your name, leave town, disappear, make yourself over. What hides behind that impulse is the conviction that the life you have lived, the person you are, is valueless, better off abandoned, that running away is easier than trying to change things, that change itself is not possible.

  Dorothy Allison

  Running, Past, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)

  Dorothy Allison

  Suicide, Rivers, Shame

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Mama, Scared, Said

  4 Copy quote

• I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid.

  Dorothy Allison

  Girl, Stupid, Dirty

  Dorothy Allison (2005). “Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel”, p.192, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

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