213 Quotes by Dorothy Allison

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.

She was an actress in the theater of true life.

I had to say to her that it isn’t just men, and it isn’t just men “like that.

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

Entitlement, I have told them, is a matter of feeling like we rather than they.

I believe in the remade life, the possibilities inherent in our lesbian and gay chosen families, our families of friends and lovers, the healing that can take place among the most wounded of us. My family of friends has kept me alive through lovers who have left, enterprises that have failed, and all too many stories that never got finished. That family has been part of remaking the world for me.

Romantic love continues the status quo in which we both are victimized and victimize each other.

The things you hesitate to talk about,” Bertha repeated in her husky North Carolina accent, “those are the things you should be writing about.

I am not here to make anyone happy. What I am here for is to claim my life, my mama’s death, our losses and our triumphs, to name them for myself.