Dorothy Allison Quotes (22 Quotes)

Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't for real. It's like bad whiskey. Run through you fast and leave you with pain.

Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That's all you need to know in this lifeàjust 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.

I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid.

I would imagine being tied up and put in a haystack while someone put the dry, stale straw ablaze. I would picture it perfectly while rocking on my hand. The daydream was about struggling to get free while the fire burned hotter and closer. I am not sure if I came when the fire reached me or after I had imagined escaping it. But I came. I orgasmed on my hand to the dream of fire.

It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I live in the here and now.

Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn't know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately.

People pay for that they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And the pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. - James Baldwin

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

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

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.

When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

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.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

When I saw him speak here before, I could look into the audience and see people who look like him laughing at things I didn't know the references to. There is an intimacy between Chicago writers and the population of this city that I find really wonderful. It's warm and it's welcoming. It's a little like going to a Baptist church. They know when to say 'Amen'.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

Independent presses and bookstores give access to literature specific to a place. Readers can find stories they need.

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.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

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.