Dorothy Allison Quotes:- Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism, and lesbianism.
She is a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Inspirational Dorothy Allison Quotes
“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.”-Dorothy Allison
“Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.”-Dorothy Allison
“Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I’d rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.”-Dorothy Allison
“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
“Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.”-Dorothy Allison
“Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.”-Dorothy Allison
“I think I would have died if there hadn’t been the women’s movement.”-Dorothy Allison
“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
“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
“When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels. My sister became unmarried and pregnant during high school, and she kept saying, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen! Why is this happening to me?’ Someone should have given her another book to read.”-Dorothy Allison
Famous Dorothy Allison Quotes And Sayings
“And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don’t think love saves you.”-Dorothy Allison
“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.”-Dorothy Allison
“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
“I have a terrible memory.”-Dorothy Allison
“Watch out, or I’m liable to put you in a story.”-Dorothy Allison
“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
Top 10 Dorothy Allison Quotes
“I’ll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.”-Dorothy Allison
“Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.”-Dorothy Allison
“It’s fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.”-Dorothy Allison
“It’s important to set challenges that you’re not sure you’re equal to.”-Dorothy Allison
“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?”-Dorothy Allison
“Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.”-Dorothy Allison
“My son, the 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.”-Dorothy Allison
“Where the 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.”-Dorothy Allison
“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.”-Dorothy Allison
“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
“I can’t write what I don’t believe in.”-Dorothy Allison