Quotes from Dorothy Allison

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

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.

I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.

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

...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.

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

Delia picked at the raw sores of her conscience...Drunk or sober, Delia lived in the small town in her heart, ignoring the world in which all her love had turned to grief.

I wanted her to to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be. (107)

And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.

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 you don't.

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 well better be beautiful.

I think it's wonderful that people in pickup trucks are buying two flats of dog food and a copy of 'Bastard.' I want my view of the world to be right up there next to gallon boxes of Tide.

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

I have a terrible memory.

If you write a book that's as powerful and successful as 'Bastard,' there's a strong desire to prove there's something else.

Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.

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

When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels. My sister became unmarried and pregnant during high school, and she kept saying, 'This wasn't supposed to happen! Why is this happening to me?' Someone should have given her another book to read.

My assumption when I began writing was that you were never going to make any money. And you were never going to reach everyone. Therefore you had to do as much as you could in the service of something you genuinely believed in. And if you do that and people get upset, well, there you go.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

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

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. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.

Watch out, or I'm liable to put you in a story.