Dorothy Allison - Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995)

11 Sourced Quotes

View all Dorothy Allison Quotes
Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.

Dorothy Allison
I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means.

Dorothy Allison
Babies change things, open doors you thought were shut, close others. Make you into something you never been.

Dorothy Allison
Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different...I claimed myself and remade my life. Only when I knew I belonged to myself completely did I become capable of giving myself to another, of finding joy in desire, pleasure in our love, power in this body no one else owns.

Dorothy Allison
Behind the story I tell is the one I don't...Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.

Dorothy Allison
Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time.

Dorothy Allison
For 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
Stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.

Dorothy Allison
I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.

Dorothy Allison
Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

Dorothy Allison
Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems. Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time. And I loved her for that.

Dorothy Allison