More Dorothy Allison

Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of...
DOROTHY ALLISON

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

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each othe...
DOROTHY ALLISON

He loves her like a gambler loves a fast racehorse or a desperate man loves whiskey. That kind of lo...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Gravy is the simplest, tastiest, most memory-laden dish I know how to make: a little flour, salt and...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to m...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I think it's wonderful that people in pickup trucks are buying two flats of dog food and a copy ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Independent presses and bookstores give access to literature specific to a place. Readers can find s...
DOROTHY ALLISON

When I saw him speak here before, I could look into the audience and see people who look like him la...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I tell my students you have an absolute right to write about people you know and love. You do. But t...
DOROTHY ALLISON

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

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

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the worl...
DOROTHY ALLISON

The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
DOROTHY ALLISON

Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fi...
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

Twenty years after we had left so fierce and proud, we were all right back where we had started, yok...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

No lies, I thought, but lots of stories. True stories. True lies. Powerful stories, heroic tales, an...
DOROTHY ALLISON

take details from “real life” into fiction and make them believable requires careful work: creat...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if...
DOROTHY ALLISON

my tribe: raped children, working-class girls, and those raised to both love and hate their own as I...
DOROTHY ALLISON

What I loved were books that heightened the sense of life’s wonders without denying the complexity...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I might not have ever had the courage to write those stories without that experience, that training ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

They looked young, even Nevil, who’d had his teeth knocked out, while the aunts—Ruth, Raylene, A...
DOROTHY ALLISON

he had never imagined she would leave him for messing around with girls he would never have married ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Anney makes the best gravy in the county, the sweetest biscuits, and puts just enough vinegar in tho...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I made my life, the same way it looks like you're gonna make yours—out of pride and stubbornness a...
DOROTHY ALLISON

For that is of course what it means to read a novel and live in it for a while. You are viscerally i...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Once I was born, her hopes had turned and I had climbed up her life like a flower reaching for the s...
DOROTHY ALLISON

No one knew she cried in the night for Lyle and her lost happiness, that under that biscuit crust ex...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Moving had no season, was all seasons, crossed time like a train with no schedule. We moved so often...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't f...
DOROTHY ALLISON

He never said "Don't tell your mama." He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I would imagine being tied up and put in a haystack while someone put the dry, stale straw ablaze. I...
DOROTHY ALLISON

The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the book...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I wanted her to to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)
DOROTHY ALLISON

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

Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could b...
DOROTHY ALLISON

My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. T...
DOROTHY ALLISON

People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do the right thing because the ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a litt...
DOROTHY ALLISON

People pay for that they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And th...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That’s all you need to know in this life…ju...
DOROTHY ALLISON

She blushed. I love it when women blush, especially those big butch girls who know you want them. An...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Yes, somewhere inside me there is a child always eleven years old, a girlchild who holds the world r...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I say, “Talk to me. Tell me who you are, what you want, what you’ve never had, the story you’v...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I reminded myself that there were just some things we never had talked about before, like sex, money...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Let me tell you a story. I tell stories to prove I was meant to survive, knowing it is not true.
DOROTHY ALLISON

It is so hard to be a girl and want what you have never had. To be a child and want what you cannot ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Every writing course I ever heard of said the same thing. Take one story, follow it through, beginni...
DOROTHY ALLISON

The women I loved most in the world horrified me. I did not want to grow up to be them.
DOROTHY ALLISON

Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.
DOROTHY ALLISON

I’m a storyteller. I’ll work to make you believe me. Throw in some real stuff, change a few deta...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I am not here to make anyone happy. What I am here for is to claim my life, my mama's death, our los...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Women.
Lord God, I used to follow these girls.
THey would come at me, those girls who wer...
DOROTHY ALLISON

It was a story to tell myself, a promise. Saying out loud, "You're never going to touch me again" - ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I am the woman who lost herself but now is found, the lesbian, outside the law of the church and man...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different. Men eat themselves up believing ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.
DOROTHY ALLISON

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is what it means to have no loved version of yo...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Love was something I would not have to worry about - the whole mystery of love, heartbreak songs, an...
DOROTHY ALLISON

For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Behind the story I tell is the one I don't.

Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I became a feminist activist propelled in part by outrage and despair, and a stubborn determination ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Everything I know, everything I put in my fiction, will hurt someone somewhere as surely as it will ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

If you write a book that's as powerful and successful as 'Bastard,' there's a strong...
DOROTHY ALLISON

Why write stories? To join the conversation.
DOROTHY ALLISON

The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that'...
DOROTHY ALLISON

If somebody gave you several thousand dollars and nothin' to do but write, would you be a writer...
DOROTHY ALLISON

My assumption when I began writing was that you were never going to make any money. And you were nev...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision tha...
DOROTHY ALLISON

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

The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost,...
DOROTHY ALLISON

My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.
DOROTHY ALLISON

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

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the ...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villa...
DOROTHY ALLISON

I have a terrible memory.
DOROTHY ALLISON Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm...
IAN ALLISON Improv training allows you to get out of your head a little bit and take more risks, which is someth...
ALLISON TOLMAN Box office is one of the strongest tools we have toward preserving our ability to make our movies. W...
ALLISON ANDERS Whenever I've done a sketch in which I'm asked to play a mom, my brain goes to Minnesota. It...
ALLISON TOLMAN When I graduated from college in early 2010, I decided that I needed to create a calling card, some ...
ALLISON WILLIAMS I went to New York for the first time when I was in college for a school trip and, uh, it did not ap...
ALLISON TOLMAN I went to New York for the first time when I was in college for a school trip and, uh, it did not ap...
ALLISON TOLMAN All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.
MOSE ALLISON Sometimes fake laughing is hard once you've done a scene 18 times. I don't want to brag, but...
ALLISON WILLIAMS

World trade means competition from anywhere; advancing technology encourages cross-industry competit...
ERIC ALLISON It's easier to quote poets than to read them.
ALLISON BARROWS Allison Janney's character in 'The West Wing' was so rocking! I am a huge fan of Mary Lo...
ALLISON MACK But there was not a job that could say that Luther Allison didn't do his job.
LUTHER ALLISON I want people to recognize Luther Allison when I play.
LUTHER ALLISON I look in music magazines now and see things on Luther Allison, and my name's getting out there ...
LUTHER ALLISON When I was little, I used to watch Disney movies all the time, and it drove me crazy that Cinderella...
ALLISON WILLIAMS I started getting Twitter followers after I started doing press for 'Fargo.' One of my best ...
ALLISON TOLMAN There are lots of things about me that aren't like the rest of my friends. But I try to learn as...
ALLISON WILLIAMS Luckily, the public school system that I was in had a really great drama program, so I plunged into ...
ALLISON SCAGLIOTTI I don't believe you ever get closure on anything. Things leave a permanent mark on you.
ALLISON ANDERS Then I started listenin' a lot to classical composers. Piano works. Just to see what they were d...
MOSE ALLISON Catherine Keener is everyone's dream sister slash mom slash aunt.
ALLISON WILLIAMS You have to have personality and show that you are respectful and that you have responsibility and d...
AMBER ALLISON We would especially like to thank our Mom and Dad and our family for supporting us.
AMBER ALLISON The Agency has been behind us all the way and has explained everything whenever we have had doubts o...
AMBER ALLISON We also met casting directors and others in the field and got to find out what they did and they wer...
AMBER ALLISON Then we started going once a month to Pennsylvania and would practice reading commercials and on the...
AMBER ALLISON It has been like that since the first day I got here. As soon as I got here he showed me around camp...
AUNDRAE ALLISON Me and James communicated prior to the play. Their corners were playing a lot of cover three zones, ...
AUNDRAE ALLISON It was huge for us. That's the kind of thing that the team works so hard to just to come to this day...
AUNDRAE ALLISON That sounds great to me. I want that. I want to show what I can do and showcase my talent.
AUNDRAE ALLISON It was a huge play for me because I really owe a lot to the team by accepting me coming straight fro...
AUNDRAE ALLISON I was planning on doing something, but I wanted to act like I've been in the end zone before.
AUNDRAE ALLISON I really don't believe there's a lot of people that have heard of me. In the past few seasons, we ha...
AUNDRAE ALLISON For cardio, I do SoulCycle. I really don't like to run, plus I have terrible knees and get bored...
ALLISON WILLIAMS Women now influence the majority of consumer purchases. It is women's votes that will secure vic...
ALLISON PEARSON Maybe, I want to be a teacher.
ALLISON WILLIAMS Before the race, I had to go to the end infield and they had me stand on the stage. They gave me a b...
ALLISON WILLIAMS They came in my class and told me (I won).
ALLISON WILLIAMS They gave us the topic and I just drew on the topic.
ALLISON WILLIAMS It was nice to pull together and do it. We didn't want our season to end. It was just unbelievable.
ALLISON WILLIAMS Customers look for partner companies that can bridge the gap between their business demands and tech...
ALLISON WATSON Only companies that have demonstrated high levels of customer service, proved their experience and a...
ALLISON WATSON We are providing the tools to train partners to deliver the people-ready message and supporting them...
ALLISON WATSON The training component will support partners by helping them clearly tell the story of people-ready.
ALLISON WATSON We're saying if you want to get people-ready, get it from our partners, here are our partners. So fa...
ALLISON WATSON We started the push by presenting to partners the importance of people being at the center of how Mi...
ALLISON WATSON The people-ready vision is not only for Microsoft to create opportunity, but it's also about creatin...
ALLISON WATSON This research is industry-changing [in terms of] partner profitability. It's grounded in real key pe...
ALLISON WATSON We place tremendous value on our partners, who help us deliver solutions and applications to custome...
ALLISON WATSON Customers are looking for partner companies that can bridge the gap between their business demands a...
ALLISON WATSON Many household chemicals meet at least one of these criteria to varying degrees.
ALLISON TEETERS Overall, I think the teachers really enjoyed knowing there is a resource out there.
ALLISON TEETERS The teachers liked the fact there are so many resources at their fingertips because the Web site has...
ALLISON TEETERS It's a diverse enough program that they could apply it to anything, depending upon what they're stud...
ALLISON TEETERS Steeleville, I think we kind of came in with our heads a little high, expectations a little too high...
ALLISON SPENCE I am extremely happy with the playing (on Saturday). This was a tournament we thought that we could ...
ALLISON SPENCE We had some rest even though we were down with injuries. I had one player out with a swollen thyroid...
ALLISON SPENCE Allie really stepped up, and Allie was very strong (Saturday), she was great on defense. Allie was e...
ALLISON SPENCE We rolled (against Christian Fellowship Academy). When the momentum is in our favor we are an extrem...
ALLISON SPENCE I was pleased with the girls. The first game we held with them for a while.
ALLISON SPENCE (The Lady Crusaders) were intimidating, even though we didn't really look intimidated. They just hav...
ALLISON SPENCE It was definitely the most errors we've committed and they were setting errors. It wasn't our defens...
ALLISON SPENCE Then, they took off on us.
ALLISON SPENCE We went out in our (van) and we were just talking about how we had to stay focused. Even though ther...
ALLISON SCHLINKERT We were just focused. We just had to keep playing our game and not worry about how they were winning...
ALLISON SCHLINKERT You never come in expecting to lose. You're confident in your team and what you can do.
ALLISON SCHLINKERT Our team this year gets along great. We hang out all the time, and we all are having fun.
ALLISON SCHLINKERT It'll be a great team, and it'll be a great match.
ALLISON SCHLINKERT I don't even know how to describe it. I'm just so incredibly excited. We played well. We stayed enth...
ALLISON SCHLINKERT The album has a lot of true stories in there. We did three full tours last year, so there were a lot...
ALLISON ROBERTSON It's very collaborative. We like to get everybody's opinion, just like we did we were in eighth grad...
ALLISON ROBERTSON It makes you feel like, wow, there are people who aren't jaded, who enjoy watching rock music, havin...
ALLISON ROBERTSON We needed a little more variety, some different tempos and textures. It was not a plan to go for som...
ALLISON ROBERTSON Our manager expected us to throw things at him, ... but I said, 'I'll do it! Yeah!' and the rest of ...
ALLISON ROBERTSON It's cool. I complain every summer that I don't get to go to fairs anymore -- I always used to go as...
ALLISON ROBERTSON The female bond, I have to say,
ALLISON ROBERTSON It teaches you to be considerate of people, to work together as a team to succeed and play off each ...
ALLISON NERMOE I could see it from own my experience.
ALLISON NERMOE It just sounded like it would be fun to see people grow and to help them get well. It'd be a new exp...
ALLISON NERMOE I've been really happy with how they've played and they've really stepped up this year. Very proud o...
ALLISON NERMOE I was kind of worried, but coach (Wiles) thought it was a good idea, so I did it and it was fun. I l...
ALLISON NERMOE It provided quite a strong figure for Q3.
ALLISON MONTGOMERY I think that it looks like what the market is doing is starting to look to Thursday's ECI and GDP nu...
ALLISON MONTGOMERY I think at the moment what they are trying to do is limit yen strength, given the fact that Japanese...
ALLISON MONTGOMERY Fundamentals will determine the level of dollar-yen, and the fundamentals still argue for a higher d...
ALLISON MONTGOMERY It's not rocket science. I blush at calling myself an inventor.
ALLISON MILLS I'm just gonna stay away from the caffeine.
ALLISON MILLS I've found that people really want to help you. But at the same time you have to really put yourself...
ALLISON MILLS We still haven't heard back (from the patent office). We had a dilemma. Wait two whole years (for th...
ALLISON MILLS It was not very functional.
ALLISON MILLS I've heard stories of people who have done this and who have a garage full of stuff that just sits. ...
ALLISON MILLS Lindsay is a really good pitcher, and she has been hitting her spots. I think we fed off her energy ...
ALLISON MERZON It was time for a rally, we turned our jackets inside out and from there our bats woke up.
ALLISON MERZON We don?t have to put up a lot of hits to score.
ALLISON MERZON This is the most balanced, the deepest and the best hitting team we ever had. We have kids on our be...
ALLISON MERZON It's an absolute tribute to how hard Kim has worked.
ALLISON MCNEILL No question she's got skills, some coach has to recognize it. One of the things she does is make oth...
ALLISON MCNEILL She has an unbelievable passion for the game, a passion for work. She's really made herself into a g...
ALLISON MCNEILL After the 2000 Olympics, veteran players came back wanting to pursue the goal of qualifying for a wo...
ALLISON MCNEILL Our comeback in the second half was sparked by the contributions of the players coming off of the be...
ALLISON MCNEILL It was a great effort to get an 18-point turn around.
ALLISON MCNEILL It was one of our best defensive efforts of the summer,
ALLISON MCNEILL The first big issue is 'if', because a lot of people are still talking 'if' - and that's a fundament...
ALLISON MCGEER We know from the testing that's been done so far that this is not influenza, we know this is not SAR...
ALLISON MCGEER SARS gave everyone ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢Â‚Â¬Ã‚Â¦ new respect for respiratory viruses.
ALLISON MCGEER There are literally hundreds of viruses that can cause these types of outbreaks. It is still likely ...
ALLISON MCGEER There are many other viruses it could be. The Ontario Public Health lab is working very hard on iden...
ALLISON MCGEER Even though it doesn't prevent all illnesses, it is effective at preventing serious illness and deat...
ALLISON MCGEER This year looks good so far.
ALLISON MAIRE

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

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Dorothy Allison

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

Dorothy Allison

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