I can't write what I don't believe in.
— Dorothy Allison
Every kid I meet who's a reader has got something like that, their fantasy world. And science fiction is the best, especially for girls because it's the one place where you can do the forbidden.
Gravy is the simplest, tastiest, most memory-laden dish I know how to make: a little flour, salt and pepper, crispy bits of whatever meat anchored the meal, a couple of cups of water or milk and slow stirring to break up lumps.
If you write a book that's as powerful and successful as 'Bastard,' there's a strong desire to prove there's something else.
It's fun to tease people about where fiction and life intersect.
The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.
I have a terrible memory.
The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that's what you should do. But it damn well better be beautiful.
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
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.
I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.
And while it is true that I got the best woman in the world, I don't think love saves you.
Where story comes from, I don't know. I know that I become obsessed with something. An idea, an image, a person, the way a person talks. And then something starts happening that I can't explain, and it has a lot to do with language.
My sisters, we didn't like each other as kids. We were scared of each other, I think, but we've grown to love each other. It was fun to write about these sisters who were supposed to hate each other but really don't.
If somebody gave you several thousand dollars and nothin' to do but write, would you be a writer then? Would you tell your stories, your family's stories, then?
Teenagers are free verse walking around on two legs.
I think it's wonderful that people in pickup trucks are buying two flats of dog food and a copy of 'Bastard.' I want my view of the world to be right up there next to gallon boxes of Tide.
I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels. My sister became unmarried and pregnant during high school, and she kept saying, 'This wasn't supposed to happen! Why is this happening to me?' Someone should have given her another book to read.
One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.
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.
Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.
My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown up a middle-class child - one who sometimes asks me for stories of my childhood but knows nothing of what it means to grow up poor and afraid. I have worked to make sure of that.
Writing is the only way I know to demand justice from an uncaring universe.
It's important to set challenges that you're not sure you're equal to.
I'll tell you the secret. When you begin with a character, you want to begin by creating a villain.
Watch out, or I'm liable to put you in a story.
My assumption when I began writing was that you were never going to make any money. And you were never going to reach everyone. Therefore you had to do as much as you could in the service of something you genuinely believed in. And if you do that and people get upset, well, there you go.
I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.
Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.
