He never said "Don't tell your mama." He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what I felt, what scared me and shamed me... (109)
Dorothy AllisonPeople begin to write in order to create what they have not found and, a little bit, to give something back.
Dorothy AllisonI put on the page a third look at what I've seen in life - the reinvented experience of a cross-eyed working-class lesbian, addicted to violence, language and hope, who has made the decision to live, is determined to live, on the page and on the street, for me and mine.
Dorothy AllisonTwo 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.
Dorothy Allison... suffering does not ennoble. It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred, or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw off the conditioning of being despised, the fear of becoming the they that is talked about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths and easy moralities, to see ourselves as human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of us extraordinary
Dorothy Allison