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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.

-Toni Morrison

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I'm Interested In The

Toni Morrison

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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.

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You Have To Be Willing To Think The Unthinkable.

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.

We Die. That May Be The Meaning Of Life. But We Do Language. That May Be The Measure Of Our Lives.

Meaning Of Life

You Need Intelligence, And You Need To Look. You Need A Gaze, A Wide Gaze, Penetrating And Roving - Thats What's Useful For Art.

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

Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart.

The Theme You Choose May Change Or Simply Elude You, But Being Your Own Story Means You Can Always Choose The Tone. It Also Means That You Can Invent The Language To Say Who Are You And What You Mean.

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.

Her Mind Traveled Crooked Streets And Aimless Goat Paths, Arriving Sometimes At Profundity, Other Times At The Revelations Of A Three-year-old. Throughout This Fresh, If Common, Pursuit Of Knowledge, One Conviction Crowned Her Efforts: ...she Knew There Was Nothing To Fear.

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.

Something That Is Loved Is Never Lost.

In Times Of Dread, Artists Must Never Choose To Remain Silent.

You Free. Nothing And Nobody Is Obliged To Save You But You.

It Would Be Ten Years Before They Saw Each Other Again, And Their Meeting Would Be Thick With Birds.

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.

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

One Of The Monstrous Things That Slavery In This Country Caused Was The Breakup Of Families. I Mean, Physical Labor, Horrible; Beatings, Horrible; Lynching Death, All Of That, Horrible. But The Living Life Of A Parent Who, A, Has No Control Over What Happens To Your Children, None. They Don't Belong To You. You May Not Even Nurse Them. They May Be Shipped Off Somewhere, As In "beloved" The Mother Was, To Be Nursed By Somebody Who Was Not Able To Work In The Fields And Was A Wet Nurse.

All Water Has A Perfect Memory And Is Forever Trying To Get Back To Where It Was.

Certain Seeds It Will Not Nurture, Certain Fruit It Will Not Bear And When The Land Kills Of Its Own Volition, We Acquiesce And Say The Victim Had No Right To Live

She Was The Third Beer. Not The First One, Which The Throat Receives With Almost Tearful Gratitude; Nor The Second, That Confirms And Extends The Pleasure Of The First. But The Third, The One You Drink Because It's There, Because It Can't Hurt, And Because What Difference Does It Make?

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.

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

All Of Us--all Who Knew Her--felt So Wholesome After We Cleaned Ourselves On Her. We Were So Beautiful When We Stood Astride Her Ugliness. Her Simplicity Decorated Us, Her Guilt Sanctified Us, Her Pain Made Us Glow With Health, Her Awkwardness Made Us Think We Had A Sense Of Humor. Her Inarticulateness Made Us Believe We Were Eloquent. Her Poverty Kept Us Generous. Even Her Waking Dreams We Used--to Silence Our Own Nightmares.

Word-work Is Sublime... Because It Is Generative; It Makes Meaning That Secures Our Difference, Our Human Difference-the Way In Which We Are Like No Other Life. We Die. That May Be The Meaning Of Life. But We Do Language. That May Be The Measure Of Our Lives.

Meaning Of Life

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.

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.

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.

The Function Of Freedom Is To Free Someone Else.

Do They Still Call It Infatuation? That Magic Ax That Chops Away The World In One Blow, Leaving Only The Couple Standing There Trembling? Whatever They Call It, It Leaps Over Anything, Takes The Biggest Chair, The Largest Slice, Rules The Ground Wherever It Walks, From A Mansion To A Swamp, And Its Selfishness Is Its Beauty.... People With No Imagination Feed It With Sex -- The Clown Of Love. They Don't Know The Real Kinds, The Better Kinds, Where Losses Are Cut And Everybody Benefits. It Takes A Certain Intelligence To Love Like That -- Softly, Without Props.

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

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.

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

Writing Is Really A Way Of Thinking--not Just Feeling But Thinking About Things That Are Disparate, Unresolved, Mysterious, Problematic Or Just Sweet.

Being Able To Laugh Got Me Through.

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.

From My Point Of View, Your Life Is Already A Miracle Of Chance Waiting For You To Shape Its Destiny.

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

Lonely Was Much Better Than Alone.

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

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

I'm Just Trying To Look At Something Without Blinking, To See What It Is Like, Or It Could Have Been Like, And How That Had Something To Do With The Way We Live Now. Novels Are Always Inquiries For Me.

Sexist Language, Racist Language, Theistic Language - All Are Typical Of The Policing Languages Of Mastery, And Cannot, Do Not, Permit New Knowledge Or Encourage The Mutual Exchange Of Ideas.

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.

And Wouldn't You Know He'd Be A Singing Man.

I Don't Know Whether The Bird You Are Holding Is Dead Or Alive, But What I Do Know Is That It Is In Your Hands. It Is In Your Hands.

I Don't Think One Parent Can Raise A Child. I Don't Think Two Parents Can Raise A Child. You Really Need The Whole Village.

The Enemy Is Not Men. The Enemy Is The Concept Of Patriarchy, The Concept Of Patriarchy As The Way To Run The World Or Do Things.

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.

Language Alone Protects Us From The Scariness Of Things With No Names. Language Alone Is Meditation.

It Was Becoming A Habit-this Concentration On Things Behind Him. Almost As Though There Were No Future To Be Had. *milkman*

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.

Lay My Head On The Railroad Line. Train Come Along; Pacify My Mind.

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

To Get To A Place Where You Could Love Anything You Chose--not To Need Permission For Desire--well Now _that_ Was Freedom.

Nothing Could Be Taken For Granted. Women Who Loved You Tried To Cut Your Throat, While Women Who Didn't Even Know Your Name Scrubbed Your Back. Witches Could Sound Like Katharine Hepburn And Your Best Friend Could Try To Strangle You. Smack In The Middle Of An Orchid There Might Be A Blob Of Jello And Inside A Mickey Mouse Doll, A Fixed And Radiant Star.

It Hit Her Like A Sledgehammer, And It Was Then That She Knew What To Feel. A Liquid Trail Of Hate Flooded Her Chest. Knowing That She Would Hate Him Long And Well Filled Her With Pleasant Anticipation, Like When You Know You Are Going To Fall In Love With Someone And You Wait For The Happy Signs. Hating Boyboy, She Could Get On With It, And Have The Safety, The Thrill, The Consistency Of That Hatred As Long As She Wanted Or Needed It To Define And Strengthen Her Or Protect Her From Routine Vulnerabilities.

Falling In Love

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

They Held Hands And Knew That Only The Coffin Would Lie In The Earth; The Bubbly Laughter And The Press Of Fingers In The Palm Would Stay Aboveground Forever. At First, As They Stood There, Their Hands Were Clenched Together. They Relaxed Slowly Until During The Walk Back Home Their Fingers Were Laced In As Gentle A Clasp As That Of Any Two Young Girlfriends Trotting Up The Road On A Summer Day Wondering What Happened To Butterflies In The Winter.

In Tar Baby, The Classic Concept Of The Individual With A Solid, Coherent Identity Is Eschewed For A Model Of Identity Which Sees The Individual As A Kaleidoscope Of Heterogeneous Impulses And Desires, Constructed From Multiple Forms Of Interaction With The World As A Play Of Difference That Cannot Be Completely Comprehended.

If Happiness Is Anticipation With Certainty, We Were Happy.

Isolation, You Know, Carries The Seeds Of Its Own Destruction Because As Times Change, Other Things Seep In.

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?

They Ran In The Sunlight, Creating Their Own Breeze Which Pressed Their Dresses Into Their Damp Skin. Reaching A Kind Of Square Of Four Locked Trees Which Promised Cooling; They Flung Themselves Into The Shade To Taste Their Lip Sweat And Contemplate The Wildness That Had Come Upon Them So Suddenly

It Had Been The Longest Time Since She Had Had A Rib-scraping Laugh. She Had Forgotten How Deep And Down It Could Be. So Different From The Miscellaneous Giggles And Smiles She Had Learned To Be Content With These Past Few Years.

A Bestseller Is A Book That Non-book Buyers Buy

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.

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?

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

The Presence Of Evil Was Something To Be First Recognized, Then Dealt With, Survived, Outwitted, Triumphed Over.

The Formula For Creative Writing In High School Or College Is Write What You Know. And I Said They Don't Know Nothing. Imagine Something. Do You Know What It's Like To Be A Madame In Paris, When You're Too Old To Have Any Clients. No, You Don't. I Don't Either. Write About It.

...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 Lived In A Little Working-class Town That Had No Black Neighborhoods At All - One High School. We All Played Together. Everybody Was Either Somebody From The South Or An Immigrant From East Europe Or From Mexico. And There Was One Church, And There Were Four Elementary Schools. And We Were All, Pretty Much Until The End Of The War, Very, Very Poor.

Anything Dead Coming Back To Life Hurts.

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

It's A Bad Word, 'belong.' Especially When You Put It With Somebody You Love ... You Can't Own A Human Being.

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

If You Can't Count, They Can Cheat You. If You Can't Read, They Can Beat You.

Womanists Is What Black Feminists Used To Call Themselves. Very Much So. They Were Not The Same Thing. And Also The Relationship With Men. Historically, Black Women Have Always Sheltered Their Men Because They Were Out There, And They Were The Ones That Were Most Likely To Be Killed.

Black People Have Always Been Used As A Buffer In This Country Between Powers To Prevent Class War.

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.

I Dream A Dream That Dreams Back At Me.

Love It, Love It And The Beat And Beating Heart, Love That Too. More Than Eyes Or Feet. More Than Lungs That Have Yet To Draw Free Air. More Than Your Life-holding Womb And Your Life-giving Private Parts, Hear Me Now, Love Your Heart. For This Is The Prize.

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

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.

The Peace I Am Thinking Of Is The Dance Of An Open Mind When It Engages Another Equally Open One.

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

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.

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.

Liberation Means You Don't Have To Be Silenced.

I Have Difficulties With Contemporary Language. Big Difficulties. I Counted, You Know, Something Like 160 Words Have Disappeared From The English Language Because Of The Use Of The Word "like." "i'm Like, He's Like" - Not "thought," Not "as If ."

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.

Black Literature Is Taught As Sociology, As Tolerance, Not As A Serious, Rigorous Art Form.

African American

She Is Convinced That When Language Dies, Out Of Carelessness, Disuse, Indifference And Absence Of Esteem, Or Killed By Fiat, Not Only She Herself, But All Users And Makers Are Accountable For Its Demise. In Her Country Children Have Bitten Their Tongues Off And Use Bullets Instead To Iterate The Voice Of Speechlessness, Of Disabled And Disabling Language, Of Language Adults Have Abandoned Altogether As A Device For Grappling With Meaning, Providing Guidance, Or Expressing Love.

What I Think The Political Correctness Debate Is Really About Is The Power To Be Able To Define. The Definers Want The Power To Name. And The Defined Are Now Taking That Power Away From Them.

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

We Read About How Ajax And Achilles Will Die For Each Other, But Very Little About The Friendship Of Women.

But Her Brain Was Not Interested In The Future. Loaded With The Past And Hungry For More, It Left Her No Room To Imagine, Let Alone Plan For, The Next Day.

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

Political Doesn't Necessarily Mean You Have An Agenda.

Can't Nothing Heal Without Pain, You Know.

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

The Seeds Of Destruction Lie In The Definition Of "chosen-ness" And Can Easily Blossom Into Bigotry. It's Not Inevitable But It Needs Constant Care To Avoid.

There Is A Certain Kind Of Peace That Is Not Merely The Absence Of War. It Is Larger Than That. The Peace I Am Thinking Of Is Not At The Mercy Of History's Rule, Nor Is It A Passive Surrender To The Status Quo. The Peace I Am Thinking Of Is The Dance Of An Open Mind When It Engages Another Equally Open One -- An Activity That Occurs Most Naturally, Most Often In The Reading/writing World We Live In. Accessible As It Is, This Particular Kind Of Peace Warrants Vigilance.

Freedom Is Choosing Your Responsibility. It's Not Having No Responsibilitie S; It's Choosing The Ones You Want.

I Sang "o Holy Night" In A School Choir. My Mother Came And Listened To Me And Complimented Me. So That Was The High Point. I Cannot Sing A Note.

Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.

Perhaps That's What All Human Relationships Boiled Down To: Would You Save My Life? Or Would You Take It?

Human Relations

Human Relationships

When You First Start Writing-and I Think It's True For A Lot Of Beginning Writers-you're Scared To Death That If You Don't Get That Sentence Right That Minute It's Never Going To Show Up Again. And It Isn't. But It Doesn't Matter-another One Will, And It'll Probably Be Better. And I Don't Mind Writing Badly For A Couple Of Days Because I Know I Can Fix It-and Fix It Again And Again And Again, And It Will Be Better.

And I Am All The Things I Have Ever Loved: Scuppernong Wine, Cool Baptisms In Silent Water, Dream Books And Number Playing.

Birth, Life, And Death― Each Took Place On The Hidden Side Of A Leaf.

I Can't Explain Inspiration. A Writer Is Either Compelled To Write Or Not. And If I Waited For Inspiration I Wouldn't Really Be A Writer.

Who's Got Game? The Ant Or The Grasshopper? The Lion Or The Mouse? Poppy Or The Snake?

A Dead Hydrangea Is As Intricate And Lovely As One In Bloom. Bleak Sky Is As Seductive As Sunshine, Miniature Orange Trees Without Blossom Or Fruit Are Not Defective; They Are That.

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.

Anger... It's A Paralyzing Emotion... You Can't Get Anything Done.

The Habit Of Getting Up Early, Which I Had Formed When The Children Were Young, Now Became My Choice. I Am Not Very Bright Or Very Witty Or Very Inventive After The Sun Goes Down.

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.

I Know The World Is Bruised And Bleeding, And Though It Is Important Not To Ignore Its Pain, It Is Also Critical To Refuse To Succumb To Its Malevolence. Like Failure, Chaos Contains Information That Can Lead To Knowledge - Even Wisdom. Like Art.

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

I Sometimes Lose Interest In The Characters And Get Much More Interested In The Trees And Animals.

I Couldn't Bear To Have People Mispronounce My Name. But The Person I Was Was This Person Who Was Called Chloe.

Say Make Me, Remake Me. You Are Free To Do It And I Am Free To Let You Because Look, Look. Look Where Your Hands Are. Now.

You Been Gone Too Long, Sula. Not Too Long, But Maybe Too Far.

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.

Shallow Believers Prefer A Shallow God.

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.

She Left Me The Way People Leave A Hotel Room. A Hotel Room Is A Place To Be When You Are Doing Something Else. Of Itself It Is Of No Consequence To One's Major Scheme. A Hotel Room Is Convenient. But Its Convenience Is Limited To The Time You Need It While You Are In That Particular Town On That Particular Business; You Hope It Is Comfortable, But Prefer, Rather, That It Be Anoymous. It Is Not, After All, Where You Live.

Sometimes The Names Were Humiliating, Deliberately So. Somebody Would Pick Out Your Flaw. If You Were Little, They Would Call You Shorty. And If You Were Angry, They Would Call You The Devil.

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.]

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.

This Is Really Skin Privilege, The Ranking Of Color In Terms Of Its Closeness To White People Or White-skinned People And Its Devaluation According To How Dark One Is And The Impact That Has On People Who Are Dedicated To The Privileges Of Certain Levels Of Skin Color.

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.

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

I Am A Writer And My Faith In The World Of Art Is Intense, But Not Irrational, Nor Naïve - Because Art Takes Us And Makes Us Take A Journey Beyond Price, Beyond Cost, Into Bearing Witness To The World As It Is And As It Should Be. Art Invites Us To Know Beauty And To Solicit It, Summon It, From Even The Most Tragic Of Circumstances.

Was It Hard? I Hope She Didn't Die Hard.' Sethe Shook Her Head. 'soft As Cream. Being Alive Was The Hard Part.

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

It Seems To Me Everything Shakespeare Did Was Political.

I Don't Think A Female Running A House Is A Problem, A Broken Family. It's Perceived As One Because Of The Notion That A Head Is A Man.

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

Falling In Love

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. No Committee Decides Who May Enter, No Crisis Of Body Or Spirit Must Accompany The Entrant. No Tuition Is Charged, No Oath Sworn, No Visa Demanded. Of The Monuments Humans Build For Themselves, Very Few Say - Touch Me, Use Me, My Hush Is Not Indifference, My Space Is Not Barrier. If I Inspire Awe, It Is Because I Am In Awe Of You And The Possibilities That Dwell In You.

The Idea Of A Wanton Woman Is Something I Have Inserted Into Almost All Of My Books. An Outlaw Figure Who Is Disallowed In The Community Because Of Her Imagination Or Activity Or Status - That Kind Of Anarchic Figure Has Always Fascinated Me. And The Benefits They Bring With Them, In Spite Of The Fact That They Are Either Dismissed Or Upbraided - Something About Their Presence Is Constructive In The Long Run.

When A Child Walks In The Room, Your Child Or Anybody Else’s Child, Do Your Eyes Light Up? That’s What They’re Looking For.

If Writing Is Thinking And Discovery And Selection And Order And Meaning, It Is Also Awe And Reverence And Mystery And Magic....authors Arrive At Text And Subtext In Thousands Of Ways, Learning Each Time They Begin Anew How To Recognize A Valuable Idea And How To Reader The Texture That Accompanies, Reveals Or Displays It To Its Best Advantage.

Most Of Our Lives Are Spent In Little Towns, Little Towns All Throughout The Country. That's Where We Live. And That's Where The Juices Come From And That's Where We Made It, Not Made It In Terms Of Success But Made Who We Are.

How Come It Can’t Fly No Better Than A Chicken?’ Milkman Asked. Too Much Tail. All That Jewelry Weighs It Down. Like Vanity. Can’t Nobody Fly With All That [stuff]. Wanna Fly, You Got To Give Up The [stuff] That Weighs You Down.’ The Peacock Jumped Onto The Hood Of The Buick And Once More Spread Its Tail, Sending The Flashy Buick Into Oblivion.

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

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.

...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.

One Has To Work Very Carefully With What Is In Between The Words. What Is Not Said. Which Is Measure, Which Is Rhythm And So On. So, It Is What You Don't Write That Frequently Gives What You Do Write Its Power.

Beauty Was Not Simply Something To Behold; It Was Something One Could Do.

This Word "love" - Discredited, "clicheed" - Can Be Restored And Love, The Instinct, The Impulse To Care For Somebody In The Hope That Somebody Will Care For You - Plus Our Language, The Language, A Language - Is About All We Have. With Everything Else Going On, This Is What Makes Us, What Keeps Us Human.

Nobody Loved Her And She Wouldn’t Have Liked It If They Had, She Considered Love A Serious Disability.

What's The World For You If You Can't Make It Up The Way You Want It?

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?

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.

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

Art Invites Us To Know Beauty And To Solicit It, Summon It, From Even The Most Tragic Of Circumstances.

Bearing Witness

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

What's Interesting About Writing Is The Invention, The Creative Thing. Writing About Myself Is A Yawn.

Love Is Never Any Better Than The Lover. Wicked People Love Wickedly, Violent People Love Violently, Weak People Love Weakly, Stupid People Love Stupidly, But The Love A Free Man Is Never Safe. There Is No Gift For The Beloved. The Lover Alone Possesses His Gift Of Love. The Loved One Is Shorn, Neutralized, Frozen In The Glance Of The Lover’s Inward Eyes.

Misery Don't Call Ahead. That's Why You Have To Stay Awake - Otherwise It Just Walks On In Your Door.

I Always Know The Ending; That's Where I Start.

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.

Love Is Never Any Better Than The Lover.

Anger Is Better. There Is A Sense Of Being In Anger. A Reality And Presence. An Awareness Of Worth. It Is A Lovely Surging.

Anything I Have Ever Learned Of Any Consequence, I Have Learned From Black People. I Have Never Been Bored By Any Black Person, Ever.

There Is An Incredible Amount Of Magic And Feistiness In Black Men That Nobody Has Been Able To Wipe Out. But Everybody Has Tried.

More Than Fear Of Loving Bears Or Birds Bigger Than Cows, I Fear Pathless Nights. How, I Wonder, Can I Find You In The Dark?

From My Point Of View, Which Is That Of A Storyteller, I See Your Life As Something Artful, Waiting, Just Waiting And Ready For You To Make It Art.

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

Hospitality Is Gold In This City; You Have To Be Clever To Figure Out How To Be Welcoming And Defensive At The Same Time. When To Love Something And When To Quit. If You Don't Know How, You Can End Up Out Of Control Or Controlled By Some Outside Thing Like That Hard Case Last Winter.

...fact Was She Knew More About Them Than She Knew About Herself, Having Never Had The Map To Discover What She Was Like. Could She Sing? (was It Nice To Hear When She Did?) Was She Pretty? Was She A Good Friend? Could She Have Been A Loving Mother? A Faithful Wife? Have I Got A Sister And Does She Favor Me? If My Mother Knew Me Would She Like Me? (140)

No Matter What All Your Teeth And Wet Fingers Anticipated, There Was No Accounting For The Way That Simple Joy Could Shake You.

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.

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

Did You Ever See The Way The Clouds Love A Mountain? They Circle All Around It; Sometimes You Can't Even See The Mountain For The Clouds. But You Know What? ... The Clouds Never Cover The Head. His Head Pokes Through, Because The Clouds Let Him; They Don't Wrap Him Up. They Let Him Keep His Head High, Free.

If He Looked Into Her Face, He Would See Those Haunted, Loving Eyes. The Hauntedness Would Irritate Him - The Love Would Move Him To Fury. How Dare She Love Him? Hadn't She Any Sense At All? What Was He Supposed To Do About That? Return It? How? What Could His Calloused Hands Produce To Make Her Smile? What Of His Knowledge Of The World And Of Life Could Be Useful To Her? What Could His Heavy Arms And Befuddled Brain Accomplish That Would Earn Him His Own Respect, That Would In Turn Allow Him To Accept Her Love?

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.

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.

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.

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

Language Can Never 'pin Down' Slavery, Genocide, War. Nor Should It Yearn For The Arrogance To Be Able To Do So. Its Force, Its Felicity, Is In Its Reach Toward The Ineffable.

I Am A Moralist. I Worry.

I Don't Think I Knew Any Of My Father's Friends - Male Friends - By Their Real Names. I Remember Them Only By Their Nicknames.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Want To Discourage You From Choosing Anything Or Making Any Decision Simply Because It Is Safe. Things Of Value Seldom Are

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

You Marvel At The Economy And This Choice Of Words. How Many Ways Can You Describe The Sky And The Moon? After Sylvia Plath, What Can You Say?

Sifting Daylight Dissolves The Memory, Turns It Into Dust Motes Floating In Light.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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