Dorothy Allison Quotes

A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.

The funny thing is, when a Harley-Davidson guy full of tattoos comes out with a Maltese, they're trying to soften themselves out. When a very soft, single lady with a tailored look comes out with a Rottweiler, she’s looking for protection, for strength. Society automatically views the guy as too strong so he brings a Maltese. It's just a natural way to balance your situation. It really depends.

The sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanity's.

It seems like a necessary balance to life, being part of the community.

Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society.

There would not be any absolute necessity for reserve if the world were honest; yet even then it would prove expedient. For, in order to attain any degree of deference, it seems necessary that people should imagine you have more accomplishments than you discover.

Sometimes you're not like the person you'd want to hang out with. Would I really want to hang out with me full time? No, you've gotta find people who balance you out.

Too much society makes a man frivolous; too little, a savage.

A strong man must be militant as well as moderate. He must be a realist as well as an idealist.

Politics [is] the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.

We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.

A person who exhibits both positive and negative qualities, strengths and weaknesses, is not flawed but complete.

On parties it's not about who you are. The real reason to which a party revolves is how good you look.

I feel like we need to understand feminism more as a tool to mediate, counteract, to ultimately defeat patriarchy and restore balance to our government, our culture and our ways of thinking and structuring the world. I think we've had a very "masculine" sensibility for a long time, and I think we need to go back to the roots of social imbalance. I think we have to try to right that first, and from there and all these more pressing issues will follow.

A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic.

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.

There are black men who are madly in love with white women. God bless them, if that's what works for them. I just hope that we can strike a balance that portrays black folks and the black family in a light that's not extreme. Those are the types of characters that I find myself attracted to.

The superior person is in harmony, but does not follow the crowd. The lesser person follows the crowd, but is not in harmony.

He was abominable...and the most alluring, tortured soul I'd ever met.

Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.

You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

I've spent so much time making sure I don't underestimate my opponents that I've forgotten it's just as dangerous to overestimate them as well.

Detachment does not mean non-involvement. You can be deeply involved but not entangled.

Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.