“Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“The books still weren’t real, but maybe they were written about city women, television women, Yankee women—just about as strange as Zeus… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“take details from “real life” into fiction and make them believable requires careful work: creating characters the reader can believe would do… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
If you write a book that's as powerful and successful as 'Bastard,' there's a strong desire to prove there's something else. — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“What I loved were books that heightened the sense of life’s wonders without denying the complexity and horror that sometimes accompanied those… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
my life has been saved over and over again by picking up a book in which someone captured the whole experience of… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“I did not imagine anyone reading my rambling, ranting stories. I was writing for myself, trying to shape my life outside my… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels. My sister became unmarried and pregnant… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“Everything I know, everything I put in my fiction, will hurt someone somewhere as surely as it will comfort and enlighten someone… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“I learned the rule about lesbians’ nipples from the porn books my stepfather kept under his mattress, the same place I had… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels. — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
It has seemed to me that literature, as I meant it, was embattled, that it was increasingly difficult to find writing doing… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Simple answers, reductionist politics, are the most prone to compromise, to saying we’re addressing the essential issue and all that other stuff can slide.… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do right because the world doesn't make sense if… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“I had to say to her that it isn’t just men, and it isn’t just men “like that.” I had to talk to her… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“Entitlement, I have told them, is a matter of feeling like we rather than they.” — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“Love was something I would not have to worry about - the whole mystery of love, heartbreak songs, and family legends. Women who pined,… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“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… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
Hunger makes you restless. you dream about food - not just any food, but perfect food, the best food, magical meals, famous and awe-inspiring,… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
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,… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
People begin to write in order to create what they have not found and, a little bit, to give something back. — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
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… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
