Dorothy Allison - Bastard out of Carolina (1992)

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I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river.

Dorothy Allison
Hunger makes you restless. You dream about food—not just any food, but perfect food, the best food, magical meals, famous and awe-inspiring, the one piece of meat, the exact taste of buttery corn, tomatoes so ripe they split and sweeten the air, beans so crisp they snap between the teeth, gravy like mother's milk singing to your bloodstream.

Dorothy Allison
She got a reputation for an easy smile and a sharp tongue, and using one to balance the other, she seemed friendly but distant

Dorothy Allison
I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid.

Dorothy Allison
Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

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

Dorothy Allison
Everything that comes to us is a blessing or a test. That's all you need to know in this life... just the certainty that God's got His eye on you, that He knows what you are made of, what you need to grow on. Why, questioning's a sin, it's pointless. He will show you your path in His own good time. And long as I remember that, I'm fine.

Dorothy Allison
That was what gospel was meant to do — make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

Dorothy Allison
It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hereafter. I live in the here and now.

Dorothy Allison
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.

Dorothy Allison
My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn't know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately.

Dorothy Allison
The 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.

Dorothy Allison
Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't for real. It's like bad whiskey. Run through you fast and leave you with pain.

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.

Dorothy Allison