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All The Time, I'm Afraid The Thing That Happened That Made It All Right For My Mother To Kill My Sister Could Happen Again. I Don't Know What It Is, I Don't Know Who It Is, But Maybe There Is Something Else Terrible Enough To Make Her Do It Again. I Need To Know What That Thing Might Be, But I Don't Want To. Whatever It Is, It Comes From Outside This House, Outside The Yard, And It Can Come Right On In The Yard If It Wants To. So I Never Leave This House And I Watch Over The Yard, So It Can't Happen Again And My Mother Won't Have To Kill Me Too.

-Toni Morrison

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All The Time, I'm

Toni Morrison

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All The Time, I'm Afraid The Thing That Happened That Made It All Right For My Mother To Kill My Sister Could Happen Again. I Don't Know What It Is, I Don't Know Who It Is, But Maybe There Is Something Else Terrible Enough To Make Her Do It Again. I Need To Know What That Thing Might Be, But I Don't Want To. Whatever It Is, It Comes From Outside This House, Outside The Yard, And It Can Come Right On In The Yard If It Wants To. So I Never Leave This House And I Watch Over The Yard, So It Can't Happen Again And My Mother Won't Have To Kill Me Too.

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When I Write, I Don't Translate For White Readers.... Dostoevski Wrote For A Russian Audience, But We're Able To Read Him. If I'm Specific, And I Don't Overexplain, Then Anyone Can Overhear Me.

Girl, I Got My Mind. And What Goes On In It. Which Is To Say, I Got Me...my Lonely Is Mine.

Don’t Beg Anybody For Anything, Especially Love.

Only Her Tight, Tight Eyes Were Left. They Were Always Left...they Were Everything. Everything Was There, In Them...thrown, In This Way, Into The Binding Conviction That Only A Miracle Could Relieve Her, She Would Never Know Her Beauty. She Would See Only What There Was To See: The Eyes Of Other People.

The Past Is Interesting To Me Because It's Been Dumbed Down Or Flattened Out, Or Academically Nitpicked So You Can't Get Any Life Out Of It, You Just Get Data.

I'm Interested In The Way In Which The Past Affects The Present And I Think That If We Understand A Good Deal More About History, We Automatically Understand A Great More About Contemporary Life.

If Happiness Is Anticipation With Certainty, We Were Happy.

Sunk In The Grass Of An Empty Lot On A Spring Saturday, I Split The Stems Of Milkweed And Thought About Ants And Peach Pits And Death And Where The World Went When I Closed My Eyes.

I Remember A Very Important Lesson That My Father Gave Me When I Was Twelve Or Thirteen. He Said, "you Know, Today I Welded A Perfect Seam And I Signed My Name To It." And I Said, "but, Daddy, No One's Going To See It!" And He Said, "yeah, But I Know It's There." So When I Was Working In Kitchens, I Did Good Work.

Evil Is Not Interesting. What Is It, Chopping Off Someone's Head? We Used To Do That As Kids, You Know, You Tear Up Paper Dolls And Stuff. I Know Everyone's Done It In The History Of The World, But Maybe Everybody Was Dumb And They Were Just Looking For Something Interesting To Do. What's Really Interesting And Hard Is Being Good.

You Got Two Feet, Sethe, Not Four." He Said, And Right Then A Forest Sprang Up Between Them; Tactless And Quiet.

We Never Shape The World . . . The World Shapes Us.

You Looked At Them And Wondered Why They Were So Ugly; You Looked Closely And Could Not Find The Source. Then You Realized That It Came From Conviction, Their Conviction. It Was As Though Some Mysterious All-knowing Master Had Given Each One A Cloak Of Ugliness To Wear, And They Had Each Accepted It Without Question.

You Your Own Best Thing, Sethe. You Are.

All She Saw, Down In The Cellar Well Beneath The Stoop, Was A Light Yellow Feather With A Tip Of Green. And She Had Never Named Him. Had Called Him "my Parrot" All These Years. "my Parrot." "love You. "love You." Did The Dogs Get Him? Or Did He Get The Message - That She Said, "my Parrot" And He Said, "love You," And She Had Never Said It Back Or Even Taken The Trouble To Name Him - And Manage Somehow To Fly Away On Wings That Had Not Soared For Six Years.

It's Important, Therefore, To Know Who The Real Enemy Is, And To Know The Function, The Very Serious Function Of Racism, Which Is Distraction. It Keeps You From Doing Your Work. It Keeps You Explaining Over And Over Again, Your Reason For Being. Somebody Says You Have No Language And So You Spend 20 Years Proving That You Do. Somebody Says Your Head Isn't Shaped Properly So You Have Scientists Working On The Fact That It Is. Someone Says You Have No Art So You Dredge That Up. Somebody Says You Have No Kingdoms And So You Dredge That Up. None Of That Is Necessary. There Will Always Be One More Thing.

Most Of The Really Good Literature I've Read In My Life Was Political, Meaning It Was Important - About Something Going On In The History Of The World - Or Contemporary.

The Body Is Ready To Have Babies. Nature Wants It Done Then, When The Body Can Handle It, Not After 40, When The Income Can Handle It.

Never Did He Once Consider Directing His Hatred Toward The Hunters. Such An Emotion Would Have Destroyed Him ... His Subconscious Knew What His Min Did Not Guess-that Hating Them Would Have Consumed Him, Burned Him Up Like A Piece Of Soft Coal, Leaving Only Flakes Of Ash And A Question Mark Of Smoke.

The Hopelessness That Comes From Knowing Too Little And Feeling Too Much (so Brittle, So Dry He Is In Danger Of The Reverse: Feeling Nothing And Knowing Everything)

Knowing Everything

It's Been Mentioned Or Suggested That Paradise Will Not Be Well Studied, Because It's About This Unimportant Intellectual Topic, Which Is Religion.

I Wrote My First Novel Because I Wanted To Read It.

Don't Ever Think I Fell For You, Or Fell Over You. I Didn't Fall In Love, I Rose In It.

I Know It's Trash: Just Another Story Made Up To Scare Wicked Females And Correct Unruly Children. But It's All I Have. I Know I Need Something Else. Something Better. Like A Story That Shows How Brazen Women Can Take A Good Man Down. I Can Hum To That.

I Like Marriage. The Idea.

Your Life Is Already Artful-waiting, Just Waiting, For You To Make It Art.

Waiting For You

I Don't Want You To Write About What You Know, Because You Don't Know Anything. I Don't Want To Hear About Your Boyfriend Or Your Grandma... I'm Getting A Little Tired Of 'my Life Story As Fiction'. Please Don't Tell Me About Your Little Life - Is There Nothing Larger? More Important?

The Difference Between That Which Is Humane And That Which Is Patriotic Is A Vital Difference.

It Was My Father Who Could Do No Wrong. So I Didn't Think Of It As, Oh, Look, My Father's A Violent Man.

Here I Am Not The One To Throw Out. No One Steals My Warmth And Shoes Because I Am Small. No One Handles My Backside. No One Whinnies Like Sheep Or Goat Because I Drop In Fear And Weakness. No One Screams At The Sight Of Me. No One Watches My Body For How It Is Unseemly. With You My Body Is Pleasure Is Safe Is Belonging. I Can Never Not Have You Have Me.

At Some Point In Life, The World's Beauty Becomes Enough.

I Don't Work. I Keep Telling People I'm Unemployed. And I Don't Wash Dishes, And I Don't Wash Clothes, And I Don't Clean My House. Somebody Else Does That.

Anger ... It's A Paralyzing Emotion ... You Can't Get Anything Done. People Sort Of Think It's An Interesting, Passionate, And Igniting Feeling — I Don't Think It's Any Of That — It's Helpless ... It's Absence Of Control — And I Need All Of My Skills, All Of The Control, All Of My Powers ... And Anger Doesn't Provide Any Of That — I Have No Use For It Whatsoever." [interview With Cbs Radio Host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]

Pain. I Seem To Have An Affection, A Kind Of Sweettooth For It. Bolts Of Lightning, Little Rivulets Of Thunder. And I The Eye Of The Storm.

You Looked At Me Then Like You Knew Me, And I Thought It Really Was Eden, And I Couldn't Take Your Eyes In Because I Was Loving The Hoof Marks On Your Cheeks.

Love At First Sight

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I Always Start Out With An Idea, Even A Boring Idea, That Becomes A Question I Don't Have Answers To.

No Gasp At A Miracle That Is Truly Miraculous Because The Magic Lies In The Fact That You Knew It Was There For You All Along.

You Need A Whole Community To Raise A Child. I Have Raised Two Children, Alone.

Grab This Land! Take It, Hold It, My Brothers, Make It, My Brothers, Shake It, Squeeze It, Turn It, Twist It, Beat It, Kick It, Kiss It, Whip It, Stomp It, Dig It, Plow It, Seed It, Reap It, Rent It, Buy It, Sell It, Own It, Build It, Multiply It, And Pass It On — Can You Hear Me? Pass It On!

You Looking Good." "devil's Confusion. He Lets Me Look Good Long As I Feel Bad.

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Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.

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Sweet, Crazy Conversations Full Of Half Sentences, Daydreams And Misunderstandings More Thrilling Than Understanding Could Ever Be.

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If I’d A Knowed More, I Would A Loved More.

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Human Relations

Human Relationships

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If There's A Book You Really Want To Read, But It Hasn't Been Written Yet, Then You Must Write It.

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In Ohio Seasons Are Theatrical. Each One Enters Like A Prima Donna, Convinced Its Performance Is The Reason The World Has People In It.

I Have The Wonderful Pleasure Of Finishing The Book And Closing It. And I Don't Read Them Later.

I Merged Those Two Words, Black And Feminist, Because I Was Surrounded By Black Women Who Were Very Tough And And Who Always Assumed They Had To Work And Rear Children And Manage Homes.

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Political Doesn't Necessarily Mean You Have An Agenda.

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For A Long Time I Was Convinced That The Conflict Between Jewish People And Black People In This Country Was A Media Event.

I Have A Lot Of Respect For Readers Because I'm A Reader. That's How I Got Into Writing.

Oppressive Language Does More Than Represent Violence; It Is Violence; Does More Than Represent The Limits Of Knowledge; It Limits Knowledge.

Movements Toward Freedom And The Self-respect That Comes From Something Other Than What People Think Is Their Most Important Feature.

They Encouraged You To Put Some Of Your Weight In Their Hands And Soon As You Felt How Light And Lovely It Was, They Studied Your Scars And Tribulations.

To Be Given Dominion Over Another Is A Hard Thing; To Wrest Dominion Over Another Is A Wrong Thing; To Give Dominion Of Yourself To Another Is A Wicked Thing.

She Had Been Looking All Along For A Friend, And It Took Her A While To Discover That A Lover Was Not A Comrade And Could Never Be - For A Woman. And That No One Would Ever Be That Version Of Herself Which She Sought To Reach Out To And Touch With An Ungloved Hand. There Was Only Her Own Mood And Whim, And If That Was All There Was, She Decided To Turn The Naked Hand Toward It, Discover It And Let Others Become As Intimate With Their Own Selves As She Was.

Now What? All The Battles Feminists Won About Not Being A Sex Object, Not Being Evaluated Based On These Things, That Now Other Generations Are Wallowing In, The Extremes They Go To, To Look Sexually Attractive? It's Stunning How Things That One Fought Desperately For Are Just Being Tossed Aside With Aplomb.

The Best Part Of All, The Absolutely Most Delicious Part, Is Finishing It And Then Doing It Over I Rewrite A Lot, Over And Over Again, So That It Looks Like I Never Did.

I Didn't Fall In Love, I Rose In It.

Falling In Love

Now He Knew Why He Loved Her So. Without Ever Leaving The Ground, She Could Fly. 'there Must Be Another One Like You,' He Whispered To Her. 'there's Got To Be At Least One More Woman Like You.

When She Awoke There Was A Melody In Her Head She Could Not Identify Or Recall Ever Hearing Before. 'perhaps I Made It Up,' She Thought. Then It Came To Her - The Name Of The Song And All Its Lyrics Just As She Had Heard It Many Times Before. She Sat On The Edge Of The Bed Thinking, 'there Aren't Any More New Songs And I Have Sung All The Ones There Are. I Have Sung Them All. I Have Sung All The Songs There Are.

Please Don't Settle For Happiness. It's Not Good Enough. Of Course You Deserve It, But If That's All You Have In Mind - Happiness - I Want To Suggest To You That Personal Success Devoid Of Meaningfulness, Free Of A Steady Commitment To Social Justice - That's More Than A Barren Life. It's A Trivial One.

Not Good Enough

You Are Your Best Thing

Anything Dead Coming Back To Life Hurts.

Access To Knowledge Is The Superb, The Supreme Act Of Truly Great Civilizations. Of All The Institutions That Purport To Do This, Free Libraries Stand Virtually Alone In Accomplishing This Mission.

In Order To Be As Free As I Possibly Can, In My Own Imagination, I Can't Take Positions That Are Closed. Everything I've Ever Done, In The Writing World, Has Been To Expand Articulation, Rather Than To Close It, To Open Doors, Sometimes, Not Even Closing The Book -- Leaving The Endings Open For Reinterpretation, Revisitation, A Little Ambiguity.

I Guess I'm Depressed. I Don't Know. I Can't Explain It. Part Of It Is The Irritability Of Being 84, And Part Of It Is Being Not As Physically Strong As I Once Was. And Part Of It Is My Misunderstanding, I Think, Of What's Going On In The World.

...a Habit That Had Become One Of Those Necessary Things For The Night... Surely A Body-friendly If Not Familiar-lying Next To You. Someone Whose Touch Is A Reassurance, Not An Affront Or A Nuissance. Whose Heavy Breathing Neither Enrages Nor Discusts You, But Amuses You Like That Of A Cherished Pet.

I Know What Every Colored Woman In This Country Is Doing... Dying. Just Like Me. But The Difference Is They Dying Like A Stump. Me, I’m Going Down Like One Of Those Redwoods. I Sure Did Live In This World.

Unless Carefree, Mother Love Was A Killer.

Me And You, We Got More Yesterday Than Anybody. We Need Some Kind Of Tomorrow.

Maybe [i Care About Language] Because I'm An Editor, Maybe Because I'm Picky, But It's All We Got, Don't Shrink It. Don't Dumb It Out, Make It Little.

The Screams Of A Hurt Woman Were Indistinguishable From Everyday Traffic.

When A Man Angers You, He Conquers You.

I Tell My Students One Of The Most Important Things They Need To Know Is When They Are At Their Best, Creatively. They Need To Ask Themselves, What Does The Ideal Room Look Like? Is There Music? Is There Silence? Is There Chaos Outside Or Is There Serenity Outside? What Do I Need In Order To Release My Imagination?

But To Find Out The Truth About How Dreams Die, One Should Never Take The Word Of The Dreamer.

Lonely Was Much Better Than Alone.

Not Knowing It Was Hard; Knowing It Was Harder

People Say To Write About What You Know. I'm Here To Tell You, No One Wants To Read That, Cos You Don't Know Anything. So Write About Something You Don't Know. And Don't Be Scared, Ever.

Misery Colored By The Greens And Blues In My Mother's Voice Took Away All The Grief Out Of The Words And Left Me With A Conviction That Pain Was Not Only Endurable, It Was Sweet.

Life That Crawled, Life That Slunk And Crept And Never Closed Its Eyes. Life That Burrowed And Scurried, And Life So Still It Was Indistinguishable From The Ivy Stems On Which It Lay. Birth, Life, And Death - Each Took Place On The Hidden Side Of A Leaf.

Inspirational Life

Birth Life And Death

Everybody Gets Everything Handed To Them. The Rich Inherit It. I Don't Mean Just Inheritance Of Money. I Mean What People Take For Granted Among The Middle And Upper Classes, Which Is Nepotism, The Old-boy Network.

Black Women Have Always Been Friends. I Mean, If You Didn't Have Each Other You Had Nothing.

I'm Losing The Definition Now Of Politics. I Sort Of Don't Know What That Is Anymore. People Say Politically Correct, I Don't Know What That Means. I Know What They Think They Mean.

So This Is What Insanity Is. Not Goofy Behavior, But Watching A Sudden Change In The World You Used To Know.

Make Up A Story... For Our Sake And Yours Forget Your Name In The Street; Tell Us What The World Has Been To You In The Dark Places And In The Light. Don't Tell Us What To Believe, What To Fear. Show Us Belief's Wide Skirt And The Stitch That Unravels Fear's Caul.

I Have Only To Break Into The Tightness Of A Strawberry, And I See Summer - Its Dust And Lowering Skies.

For Me, Art Is The Restoration Of Order. It May Discuss All Sort Of Terrible Things, But There Must Be Satisfaction At The End. A Little Bit Of Hunger, But Also Satisfaction.

I Tell My Students There Is Such A Thing As 'writer's Block,' And They Should Respect It. You Shouldn't Write Through It. It's Blocked Because It Ought To Be Blocked, Because You Haven't Got It Right Now.

Passion Is Never Enough; Neither Is Skill.

Alice Thought, No. It Wasn't The War And The Disgruntled Veterans; It Wasn't The Droves And Droves Of Colored People Flocking To Paychecks And Streets Full Of Themselves. It Was The Music. The Dirty, Get-on-down Music The Women Sang And The Men Played And Both Danced To, Close And Shamelesss Or Apart And Wild...it Made You Do Unwise Disorderly Things. Just Hearing It Was Like Violating The Law.

I Really Think The Range Of Emotions And Perceptions I Have Had Access To As A Black Person And As A Female Person Are Greater Than Those Of People Who Are Neither.... So It Seems To Me That My World Did Not Shrink Because I Was A Black Female Writer. It Just Got Bigger.

And Fantasy It Was, For We Were Not Strong, Only Aggressive; We Were Not Free, Merely Licensed; We Were Not Compassionate, We Were Polite; Not Good, But Well Behaved. We Courted Death In Order To Call Ourselves Brave, And Hid Like Thieves From Life. We Substituted Good Grammar For Intellect; We Switched Habits To Simulate Maturity; We Rearranged Lies And Called It Truth, Seeing In The New Pattern Of An Old Idea The Revelation And The Word.

The Children - I Call Them Children When They're Under 18 - Are Hungry For That Love. The Drugs Are Just A Sleep That You Can't Even Wake Up From, Because You Might Remember What You Did When You Were There. There's No Place For Them - There Should Be A Rehabilitation Center On Every Corner, Along With Mcdonald's And The Banks. This Is Serious Business. The Waiting Lists Are Incredible. I Mean, It's Terrible. It's Really Terrible.

When Am I Happy And When Am I Sad And What Is The Difference? What Do I Need To Know To Stay Alive? What Is True In The World?

The Language Must Be Careful And Must Appear Effortless. It Must Not Sweat. It Must Suggest And Be Provocative At The Same Time.

I Get Angry About Things, Then Go On And Work.

Love Is Never Any Better Than The Lover.

Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart. When My Kids Walk In The Room My Face Says I'm Glad To See Them.

Everything I've Ever Done, In The Writing World, Has Been To Expand Articulation, Rather Than To Close It.

Literature, It Seems To Me, Is Wisdom.

Wait, Wait, Wait, Wait. Don't Try To Write Through It, To Force It. Many Do, But That Won't Work. Just Wait, It Will Come.

If A Negro Got Legs He Ought To Use Them. Sit Down Too Long, Somebody Will Figure Out A Way To Tie Them Up.

I Really Want Some Meaning. It Used To Be Easy To Toss It Off. Now It's Harder And Harder. You Have To Navigate Just To Find Something That Has Nourishment. It's The Absence Of Nourishment. What Do You Do In Place Of Nourishment? It's Usually Junk. Either It's Junk Food Or Junk Clothes Or Junk Ideas.

Like Friendship, Hatred Needed More Than Physical Intimacy; It Wanted Creativity And Hard Work To Sustain Itself

There's A Contract That I Make Between Myself, The Author, And The Reader. I Have To Figure Out How To Give The Reader Certain Powers Of Recognition, Or His Own Knowledge, His Own Feelings, But I Provide Them, So We're Working Together.

Working Together

If You Take Racism Away From Certain People - I Mean, Vitriolic Racism As Well As The Sort Of Social Racist - If You Take That Away, They May Have To Face Something Really Terrible, Misery, Self-misery, And Deep Pain About Who They Are.

Some Things You Forget. Other Things You Never Do. But It's Not. Places, Places Are Still There. If A House Burns Down, It's Gone, But The Place--the Picture Of It--stays, And Not Just In My Remory, But Out There, In The World. What I Remember Is A Picture Floating Around Out There Outside My Head. I Mean, Even If I Don't Think If, Even If I Die, The Picture Of What I Did, Or Knew, Or Saw Is Still Out There. Right In The Place Where It Happened.

Like Guitar In Son Of Solomon, And Son In Tar Baby, He Believed That Harmony Could Never Exist Between The Races.

Deep, Deep Trouble. Can't Rival The Dead For Love. Lose Every Time.

They Had Stared At Her With Great Uncomprehending Eyes. Eyes That Questioned Nothing And Asked Everything. Unblinking And Unabashed, They Stared Up At Her. The End Of The World Lay In Their Eyes, And The Beginning, And All The Waste In Bewteen.

...she Needed To Confirm Its Presence. Like The Keeper Of The Lighthouse And The Prisoner, She Regarded It As A Mooring, A Checkpoint, Some Stable Visual Object That Assured Her That The World Was Still There; That This Was Like And Not A Dream. That She Was Alive Somewhere, Inside, Which She Acknowledged To Be True Only Because A Thing She Knew Intimately Was Out There, Outside Of Herself.

What Difference Do It Make If The Thing You Scared Of Is Real Or Not?

Freeing Yourself Was One Thing; Claiming Ownership Of That Freed Self Was Another.

My Home Is Such A Powerfully Imaginative Place That The Space Is Almost Irrelevant. I Think The House I Live At On The Hudson Is Where I Belong Because It's The Only Place Where I Am That I Never Think About When I'm Leaving.

Listen, Baby, People Do Funny Things. Specially Us. The Cards Are Stacked Against Us And Just Trying To Stay In The Game, Stay Alive And In The Game, Makes Us Do Funny Things. Things We Can't Help. Things That Make Us Hurt One Another. We Don't Even Know Why.

Sex Is Difficult To Write About Because It's Just Not Sexy Enough. The Only Way To Write About It Is Not To Write Much. Let The Reader Bring His Own Sexuality Into The Text. A Writer I Usually Admire Has Written About Sex In The Most Off-putting Way. There Is Just Too Much Information.

Too Much Information

Definitions Belong To The Definer, Not The Defined.

Racism Will Disappear When It's No Longer Profitable, And No Longer Psychologically Useful. And When That Happens, It'll Be Gone. But At The Moment, People Make A Lot Of Money Off Of It, Pro And Con.

There Is A Loneliness That Can Be Rocked. Arms Crossed, Knees Drawn Up, Holding, Holding On, This Motion, Unlike A Ship's, Smooths And Contains The Rocker. It's An Inside Kind--wrapped Tight Like Skin. Then There Is The Loneliness That Roams. No Rocking Can Hold It Down. It Is Alive. On Its Own. A Dry And Spreading Thing That Makes The Sound Of One's Own Feet Going Seem To Come From A Far-off Place.

It's Bliss When You Give Up All That Stuff That Separates You From Other Human Beings. It's Hard, But You Break Down All That Stuff.

Books Are A Form Of Political Action. Books Are Knowledge. Books Are Reflection. Books Change Your Mind.

Unpersecuted, Unjailed, Unharrassed Writers Are Trouble For The Ignorant Bully, The Sly Racist, And The Predators Feeding Off The World's Resources.

Make A Difference, Does It? You Stay The Night Here Snake Get You.

The Concept Of Physical Beauty As A Virtue Is One Of The Dumbest, Most Pernicious And Destructive Ideas Of The Western World, And We Should Have Nothing To Do With It.

My First-born. All I Can Remember Of Her Is How She Loved The Burned Bottom Of Bread. Can You Beat That? Eight Children And That's All I Remember.

Shallow Believers Prefer A Shallow God.

This Is The Time For Every Artist In Every Genre To Do What He Or She Does Loudly And Consistently. It Doesn't Matter To Me What Your Position Is. You've Got To Keep Asserting The Complexity And The Originality Of Life, And The Multiplicity Of It, And The Facets Of It. This Is About Being A Complex Human Being In The World, Not About Finding A Villain. This Is No Time For Anything Else Than The Best That You've Got.

When They Fall In Love With A City, It Is For Forever And It Is Like Forever.

Falling In Love

When You Think Of Sexual Liberation, Which Women Wanted To Have Or Not Have Children, Which Is The Choice, Not A Command, And Other Kinds Of Things They Wanted In Their Relationships With Their Husbands, Or Partners Or What Have You, Became For Subsequent Generations Some License That They Themselves Feel, That Is Absolutely Demeaning And Mean Younger And Younger And Younger.

Think Of Anybody - Dostoevsky Or Jane Austen - [their Work] Was Always Something That Now We Would Call Political. So I Don't See Those Separations Too Much, Between What Is Artistic And What Is Political. Maybe In Painting... No, I Don't Even Believe That.

Race Is The Least Reliable Information You Can Have About Someone. It's Real Information, But It Tells You Next To Nothing.

Like Any Artist Without An Art Form, She Became Dangerous.

Today Is Always Here,' Said Sethe. 'tomorrow, Never.

Everywhere, Everywhere, Children Are The Scorned People Of The Earth.

I Don't Believe Any Real Artists Have Ever Been Non-political. They May Have Been Insensitive To This Particular Plight Or Insensitive To That, But They Were Political, Because That's What An Artist Is-a Politician.

Listen Up. Let Me Tell You Something. A Man Ain’t A Goddamn Ax. Chopping, Hacking, Busting Every Goddamn Minute Of The Day. Things Get To Him. Things He Can’t Chop Down Because They’re Inside.

When You Gone To Get Married? You Need To Have Some Babies. It’ll Settle You.' 'i Don’t Want To Make Somebody Else. I Want To Make Myself.

When I Went Into The Publishing Industry, Many Women Talked About The Difficulty They Had In Persuading Their Families To Let Them Go To College. They Educated The Boys, And The Girls Had To Struggle.

I Think Being An Editor Really Helped Me Take Other People's Notes On My Writing. I'd Get A Note Like 'it's Too Wet' Or 'the First Couple Chapters Are Good, But Then The Rest Of The Pages Were So Wet That They Were Completely Illegible' Or 'did You Dip This In Sprite? This Smells Like Sprite. Why Would You Dip Your Novel In Sprite?' And Instead Of Pushing Back, I'd Listen. That's An Incredibly Important Skill For A Young Writer To Have.

The Vitality Of Language Lies In Its Ability To Limn The Actual, Imagined And Possible Lives Of Its Speakers, Readers, Writers.

A Sister Can Be Seen As Someone Who Is Both Ourselves And Very Much Not Ourselves - A Special Kind Of Double.

Occasionally, As Children, We Might Figure Out How To Call Somebody A Name, And They Would Figure Out How To Call Us. But It Wasn't - It Was So Light. It Was So Fluffy. I Didn't Really Have A Strong Awareness Of Segregation And The Separation Of Races Until I Left Lorain, Ohio.

Being Able To Laugh Got Me Through.

Long Before I Was A Success, My Parents Made Me Feel Like I Could Be One.

I Write The Way Women Have Babies. You Don't Know It's Going To Be Like That. If You Did, There's No Way You Would Go Through With It.

Our Ancestors Are An Ever Widening Circle Of Hope.

Every Now And Then She Looked Around For Tangible Evidence Of His Having Ever Been There. Where Were The Butterflies? The Blueberries? The Whistling Reed? She Could Find Nothing, For He Had Left Nothing But His Stunning Absence.

Schools Must Stop Being Holding Pens To Keep Energetic Young People Off The Job Market And Off The Streets. We Stretch Puberty Out A Long, Long Time.

I Always Looked Upon The Acts Of Racist Exclusion, Or Insult, As Pitiable, From The Other Person. I Never Absorbed That. I Always Thought That There Was Something Deficient About Such People.

What Do You Say? There Really Are No Words For That. There Really Aren't. Somebody Tries To Say, 'i'm Sorry, I'm So Sorry.' People Say That To Me. There's No Language For It. Sorry Doesn't Do It. I Think You Should Just Hug People And Mop Their Floor Or Something.

There Is No Such Thing As Race. None. There Is Just A Human Race - Scientifically, Anthropologically. Racism Is A Construct, A Social Construct... It Has A Social Function, Racism.

She Is A Friend Of Mind. She Gather Me, Man. The Pieces I Am, She Gather Them And Give Them Back To Me In All The Right Order. It's Good, You Know, When You Got A Woman Who Is A Friend Of Your Mind.

A Friend Gathers All The Pieces And Gives Them Back In The Right Order.

You Are Your Own Stories And Therefore Free To Imagine And Experience What It Means To Be Human... And Although You Don't Have Complete Control Over The Narrative - No Author Does, I Can Tell You - You Could Nevertheless Create It.

One Of My Kids Was Born In 1968. There Were Going To Be Political Difficulties, But They Were Never Going To Have That Level Of Hatred And Contempt That My Brothers And My Sister And Myself Were Exposed To.

What I'm Doing Ain't About Hating White People. It's About Loving Us.

How Exquisitely Human Was The Wish For Permanent Happiness, And How Thin Human Imagination Became Trying To Achieve It.

If They Put An Iron Circle Around Your Neck I Will Bite It Away

All Paradises, All Utopias Are Designed By Who Is Not There, By The People Who Are Not Allowed In.

But Jude,' She Would Say, 'you Knew Me. All Those Days And Years, Jude, You Knew Me. My Ways And My Hands And How My Stomach Folded And How We Tried To Get Mickey To Nurse And How About That Time When The Landlord Said...but You Said...and I Cried, Jude. You Knew Me And Had Listened To The Things I Said In The Night, And Heard Me In The Bathroom And Laughed At My Raggedy Girdle And I Laughed Too Because I Knew You Too, Jude. So How Could You Leave Me When You Knew Me?

My Father Saw Two Black Men Lynched On His Street In Cartersville, As A Child. And I Think Seeing Two Black Businessmen - Not Vagrants - Hanging From Trees As A Child Was Traumatic For Him.

I Laughed But Before I Could Agree With The Hairdressers That She Was Crazy, She Said, 'what's The World For If You Can't Make It Up The Way You Want It?' " 'the Way I Want It?' " 'yeah. The Way You Want It. Don't You Want It To Be Something More Than What It Is?' " 'what'st Eh Point? I Can't Change It.' " 'that's The Point. If You Don't, It Will Change You And It'll Be Your Fault Cause You Let It. I Let It. And Messed Up My Life.' " 'mess It Up How?' " 'forgot It.' " 'forgot?' " 'forgot It Was Mine. My Life. I Just Ran Up And Down The Streets Wishing I Was Somebody Else.

I Think There's Data, And Then There's Information That Comes From Data, And Then There's Knowledge That Comes From Information. And Then, After Knowledge, There Is Wisdom. I Am Interested In How To Get From Data To Wisdom.

American Means White, And Africanist People Struggle To Make The Term Applicable To Themselves With Ethnicity And Hyphen After Hyphen After Hyphen.

It Was Not Death Or Dying That Frightened Him, But The Unexpectedness Of Both. In Sorting It All Out, He Hit On The Notion That If One Day A Year Were Devoted To It, Everybody Could Get It Out Of The Way And The Rest Of The Year Would Be Safe And Free. In This Manner He Instituted National Suicide Day.

I Began To Realize That This Idea Of The Lighter The Better And The Darker The Worse Was Really - Had An Impact On Sororities, On Friendships, On All Sorts Of Things, And It Was Stunning To Me.

Intimacy Is Extremely Important To Me And I Want It To Be Extremely Important To The Readers.

It Was A Fine Cry - Loud And Long - But It Had No Bottom And It Had No Top, Just Circles And Circles Of Sorrow.

My World Did Not Shrink Because I Was A Black Female Writer. It Just Got Bigger.

Guileless And Without Vanity,we Were Still In Love With Ourselves Then. We Felt Comfortable In Our Own Skins, Enjoyed The News That Our Senses Released To Us, Admired Our Dirt, Cultivated Our Scars, And Could Not Comprehend This Unworthiness.

And Talking About Dark! You Think Dark Is Just One Color, But It Ain't. There're Five Or Six Kinds Of Black. Some Silky, Some Woolly. Some Just Empty. Some Like Fingers. And It Don't Stay Still, It Moves And Changes From One Kind Of Black To Another. Saying Something Is Pitch Black Is Like Saying Something Is Green. What Kind Of Green? Green Like My Bottles? Green Like A Grasshopper? Green Like A Cucumber, Lettuce, Or Green Like The Sky Is Just Before It Breaks Loose To Storm? Well, Night Black Is The Same Way. May As Well Be A Rainbow.

The Administration Of The United States Is Such Dread I Almost Feel Paralyzed.

When I'm Not Creating Or Focusing On Something I Can Imagine Or Invent, I Think I Go Back Over My Life - I Don't Recommend This By The Way - And You Pick Up, Oh, What'd You Do That For? Why Didn't You Understand This?

True The Black Woman Did The Housework, The Drudgery; True, She Reared The Children, Often Alone, But She Did All Of That While Occupying A Place On The Job Market, A Place Her Mate Could Not Get Or Which His Pride Would Not Let Him Accept.and She Had Nothing To Fall Back On: Not Maleness, Not Whiteness, Not Ladyhood, Not Anything. And Out Of The Profound Desolation Of Her Reality She May Very Well Have Invented Herself.

They Seemed To Have Taken All Of Their Smoothly Cultivated Ignorance, Their Exquisitely Learned Self-hatred, Their Elaborately Designed Hopelessness And Sucked It All Up Into A Fiery Cone Of Scorn That Had Burned For Ages In The Hollows Of Their Minds― Cooled ―and Spilled Over Lips Of Outrage, Consuming Whatever Was In Its Path.

A Dead Language Is Not Only One No Longer Spoken Or Written, It Is Unyielding Language Content To Admire Its Own Paralysis. Like Statist Language, Censored And Censoring. Ruthless In Its Policing Duties, It Has No Desire Or Purpose Other Than Maintaining The Free Range Of Its Own Narcotic Narcissism, Its Own Exclusivity And Dominance. However Moribund, It Is Not Without Effect For It Actively Thwarts The Intellect, Stalls Conscience, Suppresses Human Potential. Unreceptive To Interrogation, It Cannot Form Or Tolerate New Ideas, Shape Other Thoughts, Tell Another Story, Fill Baffling Silences.

When You Know Your Name, You Should Hang On To It, For Unless It Is Noted Down And Remembered, It Will Die When You Do.

My Children Are Delightful People, Whom I Would Love Even If They Weren't My Children.

An Innocent Man Is A Sin Before God. Inhuman And Therefore Untrustworthy. No Man Should Live Without Absorbing The Sins Of His Kind, The Foul Air Of His Innocence, Even If It Did Wilt Rows Of Angel Trumpets And Cause Them To Fall From Their Vines.

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Atifete Jahjaga

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