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 hearafter. I live in the here and now.
Dorothy Allison
Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.
beauty beautiful things form
The horror of class stratification, racism, and prejudice is that some people begin to believe that the security of their families and communities depends on the oppression of others, that for some to have good lives there must be others whose lives are truncated and brutal.
people security racism good prejudice lives oppression class begin families horror
Two 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.
naked world things made
Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
change open
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.
growing romance novels sister read books horror
I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.
women movement
I tell my students you have an absolute right to write about people you know and love. You do. But the kicker is you have a responsibility to make the characters large enough that you will not have sinned against them.
rights people character characters responsibility write students absolute love
When I saw him speak here before, I could look into the audience and see people who look like him laughing at things I didn't know the references to. There is an intimacy between Chicago writers and the population of this city that I find really wonderful. It's warm and it's welcoming. It's a little like going to a Baptist church. They know when to say 'Amen'.
people city church writers laughing wonderful intimacy find speak things population chicago audience
Independent presses and bookstores give access to literature specific to a place. Readers can find stories they need.
literature stories independent readers find place bookstores give
I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.
forgiveness writing understanding
Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
truth lies lying
religion
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.
Write to your fear.
writing on-writing
Why write stories? To join the conversation.
writing stories
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