Dorothy Allison Quotes
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Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
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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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My sisters, we didn't like each other as kids. We were scared of each other, I think, but we've grown to love each other. It was fun to write about these sisters who were supposed to hate each other but really don't.
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It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.
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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.
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Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
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Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
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Where story comes from, I don't know. I know that I become obsessed with something. An idea, an image, a person, the way a person talks. And then something starts happening that I can't explain, and it has a lot to do with language.
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I can't write what I don't believe in.
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My assumption when I began writing was that you were never going to make any money. And you were never going to reach everyone. Therefore you had to do as much as you could in the service of something you genuinely believed in. And if you do that and people get upset, well, there you go.
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I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people. Neither is anyone I have ever cared deeply about.
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If somebody gave you several thousand dollars and nothin' to do but write, would you be a writer then? Would you tell your stories, your family's stories, then?
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I have a terrible memory.
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My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown up a middle-class child - one who sometimes asks me for stories of my childhood but knows nothing of what it means to grow up poor and afraid. I have worked to make sure of that.
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I want to write a great book - I want to make a difference - I want to have adventures and take enormous risks and be everything they say we are and not give a damn what anyone says.
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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.
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The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that's what you should do. But it damn well better be beautiful.
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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.
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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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I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.
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If you write a book that's as powerful and successful as 'Bastard,' there's a strong desire to prove there's something else.
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It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.
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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.
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Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.