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.
Dorothy AllisonWhen I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.
Dorothy AllisonI need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way.
Dorothy AllisonI'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.
Dorothy AllisonI wanted to start over completely, to begin again as new people with nothing of the past left over. I wanted to run away from who we had been seen to be, who we had been... It's the first thing I think of when trouble comes - the geographic solution. Change your name, leave town, disappear, make yourself over. What hides behind that impulse is the conviction that the life you have lived, the person you are, is valueless, better off abandoned, that running away is easier than trying to change things, that change itself is not possible.
Dorothy Allison