Dorothy Allison Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.

  Dorothy Allison

  Character, Creating, Secret

  4 Copy quote

• It has seemed to me that literature, as I meant it, was embattled, that it was increasingly difficult to find writing doing what I thought literature should do - which was simply to push people into changing their ideas about the world, and to go further, to encourage us in the work of changing the world, to making it more just and more truly human.

  Dorothy Allison

  Writing, Ideas, People

  7 Copy quote

• Babies change things, open doors you thought were shut, close others. Make you into something you never been.

  Dorothy Allison

  Baby, Doors

  Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.62, Penguin

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• Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.

  Dorothy Allison

  Teenager, Two, Legs

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

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• I tell my students you have an absolute right to write about people you know and love. You do. But the kicker is you have a responsibility to make the characters large enough that you will not have sinned against them.

  Dorothy Allison

  Love You, Character, Responsibility

  25 Copy quote

• And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.

  Dorothy Allison

  Thinking, World

  Dorothy Allison, Mae Miller Claxton (2012). “Conversations with Dorothy Allison”, p.90, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't for real. It's like bad whiskey. Run through you fast and leave you with pain.

  Dorothy Allison

  Running, Pain, Nice

  4 Copy quote

• Life ain't the movies.

  Dorothy Allison

  Life

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• That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

  Dorothy Allison

  Hate, Love Yourself, And Love

  Dorothy Allison (2005). “Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel”, p.127, Penguin

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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

  Writing, Order, People

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• ...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.

  Dorothy Allison

  Truth, Lying, Church

  Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.118, Open Road Media

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• My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn't know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately.

  Dorothy Allison

  Children, Heart, People

  Dorothy Allison (2005). “Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel”, p.280, Penguin

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• I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way.

  Dorothy Allison

  Needs, Way, Revolutionary

  6 Copy quote

• I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people.

  Dorothy Allison

  Nice, Writing, People

  "kin: Talking About Sex, Class And Literature". Book by Dorothy Allison, 1994.

  4 Copy quote

• I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.

  Dorothy Allison

  Shy, Scared, Complicated

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• ... survival is the least of my desires.

  Dorothy Allison

  Survival, Desire

  Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.138, Open Road Media

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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.

  Dorothy Allison

  Sports, Thinking, Understanding

  San Francisco Focus, www.imdb.com. December 23, 1996.

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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

  Couple, Memories, Water

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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

  Father, Book, Daddy

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• I wanted her to to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be. (107)

  Dorothy Allison

  Talking, Goes On, Needs

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• When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.

  Dorothy Allison

  Sister, Growing Up, Book

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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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

  Drama, Years, Twenties

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• Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

  Dorothy Allison

  Laughing, Mama, Wells

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

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• Behind the story I tell is the one I don't...Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.

  Dorothy Allison

  Wish, Stories, Behinds

  Dorothy Allison (1995). “Two Or Three Things I Know for Sure”, E P Dutton

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• fiction is the great lie that tells the truth

  Dorothy Allison

  Lying, Fiction, Telling The Truth

  "Books That Are Just What the Doctor Ordered". Interview with Liane Hansen, www.npr.org. June 18, 2006.

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