Dorothy Allison Quotes

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Books Changing The World Character Children Giving Heart Literature

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

Dorothy Allison

Beautiful, Two, Three

Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.64, Penguin

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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

Two, Naked, Three

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Write the story that you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you that there is magic in it, and if you show yourself naked for me, I'll be naked for you. It will be our covenant.

Dorothy Allison

Writing, Magic, Naked

Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.143, Open Road Media

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Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

Dorothy Allison

Lying, Together, Deceit

Dorothy Allison (2005). “Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel”, p.227, Penguin

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Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go on living I have to tell stories, that stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world

Dorothy Allison

Heart, Two, Three

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

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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

Race, Class, Needs

Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.25, Open Road Media

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The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.

Dorothy Allison

Good Life, Believe, Class

Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.25, Open Road Media

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I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.

Dorothy Allison

Meaningful, Pain, Opening Up

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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

Magic, Belief, Muscles

Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.107, Penguin

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Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different...I claimed myself and remade my life. Only when I knew I belonged to myself completely did I become capable of giving myself to another, of finding joy in desire, pleasure in our love, power in this body no one else owns.

Dorothy Allison

Knowing, Giving, Joy

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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. Do not buy into their system of censorship, imagining that if you drop this character or hide that emotion, you can slide through their blockades. Do not eat your heart out in the hope of pleasing them.

Dorothy Allison

Heart, Character, Needs

Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.142, Open Road Media

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Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.

Dorothy Allison

Writing, Justice, Demand

"'Cavedweller' offers return of a prodigal daughter" by K.C. Wildmoon, www.cnn.com.

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... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us extraordinary

Dorothy Allison

Lying, Self, Hatred

Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.25, Open Road Media

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Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

Dorothy Allison

Hate, Two, Three

Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.15, Penguin

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If I could have found what I needed at thirteen, I would not have lost so much of my life chasing vindication or death. Give some child, some thirteen-year old, the hope of the remade life. Tell the truth. Write the story that you were always afraid to tell. I swear to you there is magic in it.

Dorothy Allison

Children, Writing, Years

Dorothy Allison (2013). “Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature”, p.145, Open Road Media

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I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.

Dorothy Allison

Mean, Stories, Story Of My Life

Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.56, Penguin

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my life has been saved over and over again by picking up a book in which someone captured the whole experience of being despised and not dying.

Dorothy Allison

Book, Survival, Dying

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Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

Dorothy Allison

Healing, Cracks, Allison

Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.45, Penguin

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There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto-God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.

Dorothy Allison

Believe, Healing, Literature

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

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Why write stories? To join the conversation.

Dorothy Allison

Writing, Stories, Conversation

Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.13, Penguin

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I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.

Dorothy Allison

Strong, Feelings, Crafts

Dorothy Allison (2002). “Trash”, p.9, Penguin

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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

Children, Crazy, Believe

Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.47, Penguin

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Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That’s all you need to know in this life…just the certainty that God’s got His eye on you, that He knows what you are made of, what you need to grow on. Why,questioning’s a sin, it’s pointless. He will show you your path in His own good time. And long as I remember that, I’m fine.

Dorothy Allison

Eye, Blessing, Long

Dorothy Allison (2005). “Bastard Out of Carolina: A Novel”, p.149, Penguin

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Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.

Dorothy Allison

Sex, Struggle, Love Is

Dorothy Allison (1996). “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure”, p.39, Penguin

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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

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Born: April 11, 1949
Occupation: Writer
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