Allison

“Writing it all down was purging. Putting those stories on paper took them out of the nightmare realm and made me almost love myself for being able to finally face them. More subtly, it gave me a way to love the people I wrote about—even the ones I had fought with or hated.”
― Dorothy Allison, Trash

“Actually, the only time I ever tried to cultivate being sexy was when I read Peyton Place. I was about sixteen and I read that this guy's watching this woman walk and he can tell she's a good fuck by the way she walks. It's a whole passage. He's telling Allison McKenzie, "I know you're a virgin." And she says, "Well, how?" And he says, "I can tell by the way you walk." And I thought, Uh-oh, everybody knows! I was ashamed to be a virgin, so I tried to cultivate a fucked walk. I tried to figure out what it looked like. I figured I'd watch any hot woman I could. I mean, look at Jeanne Moreau. You watch her walk across the street on the screen and you know she's had at least a hundred men. (Penthouse interview, 1976)”
― Patti Smith

“She and Johnny have a natural ease, the biological aristocracy conferred by good looks.”
― Sarah Coleman, The Realist: A Novel of Berenice Abbott

“I learned you haven't read anything if you've only read something once or twice. Reading things more than twice was the reader version of revision.”
― Kiese Laymon, Heavy