my life has been saved over and over again by picking up a book in which someone captured the whole experience of being despised and not dying.
Dorothy AllisonI 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)
Dorothy AllisonI have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.
Dorothy AllisonThe worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209)
Dorothy AllisonWhen I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.
Dorothy AllisonFor years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.
Dorothy Allison