“Fiction is the great liar that tells the truth about how the world really lives.” — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe. — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life. — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way. — 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… — 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
If somebody gave you several thousand dollars and nothin' to do but write, would you be a writer then? Would you tell… — 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
I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been… — 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… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
If I could have found what I needed at thirteen, I would not have lost so much of my life chasing vindication… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
“People want biography. People want memoir. They want you to tell them that the story you're telling them is true. The thing… — Dorothy Allison Copy Share Image
Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go… — 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 time I sit down to write, I have a great fear that anything I write will reveal me as the monster… — 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 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
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
