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In A Way, Her Strangeness, Her Naiveté, Her Craving For The Other Half Of Her Equation Was The Consequence Of An Idle Imagination. Had She Paints, Or Clay, Or Knew The Discipline Of The Dance, Or Strings, Had She Anything To Engage Her Tremendous Curiosity And Her Gift For Metaphor, She Might Have Exchanged The Restlessness And Preoccupation With Whim For An Activity That Provided Her With All She Yearned For. And Like An Artist With No Art Form, She Became Dangerous.

-Toni Morrison

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In A Way, Her

Toni Morrison

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In A Way, Her Strangeness, Her Naiveté, Her Craving For The Other Half Of Her Equation Was The Consequence Of An Idle Imagination. Had She Paints, Or Clay, Or Knew The Discipline Of The Dance, Or Strings, Had She Anything To Engage Her Tremendous Curiosity And Her Gift For Metaphor, She Might Have Exchanged The Restlessness And Preoccupation With Whim For An Activity That Provided Her With All She Yearned For. And Like An Artist With No Art Form, She Became Dangerous.

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My Theory Is That The World Is A Difficult Place To Live In And Distraction Is The Name Of The Game.

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

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.

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.

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.

Make A Difference About Something Other Than Yourselves.

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

Which Was What Love Was: Unmotivated Respect.

Literature, It Seems To Me, Is Wisdom.

I Think Some Aspects Of Writing Can Be Taught. Obviously, You Can't Teach Vision Or Talent. But You Can Help With Comfort.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

All The Books That Were Being Published By African-american Guys Were Saying 'screw Whitey', Or Some Variation Of That. Not The Scholars But The Pop Books. And The Other Thing They Said Was, 'you Have To Confront The Oppressor.' I Understand That. But You Don't Have To Look At The World Through His Eyes. I'm Not A Stereotype; I'm Not Somebody Else's Version Of Who I Am. And So When People Said At That Time Black Is Beautiful – Yeah? Of Course. Who Said It Wasn't? So I Was Trying To Say, In The Bluest Eye, Wait A Minute. Guys. There Was A Time When Black Wasn't Beautiful. And You Hurt.

Some Native American Writers Enjoy Being Called Native American Writers.

Native American

The Formula For Creative Writing In High School Or College Is Write What You Know.

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.

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 Would Solve A Lot Of Literary Problems Just Thinking About A Character In The Subway, Where You Can't Do Anything Anyway.

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

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

He Wants To Put His Story Next To Hers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Wish I’d A Knowed More People. I Would Of Loved ‘em All. If I’d A Knowed More, I Would A Loved More

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

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

If You Surrendered To The Air, You Could Ride It.

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.

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.

There's A Difference Between Writing For A Living And Writing For Life. If You Write For A Living, You Make Enormous Compromises.... If You Write For Life, You'll Work Hard; You'll Do What's Honest, Not What Pays

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

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.

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.

A Dream Is Just A Nightmare With Lipstick.

The Unflattering Reviews Are Painful For Short Periods Of Time; The Badly Written Ones Are Deeply, Deeply Insulting. That Reviewer Took No Time To Really Read The Book.

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.

Would It Be All Right? Would It Be All Right To Go Ahead And Feel? Go Ahead And Count On Something?

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.

...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.

A Little Black Girl Yearns For The Blue Eyes Of A Little White Girl, And The Horror At The Heart Of Her Yearning Is Exceeded Only By The Evil Of Fulfillment

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.

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.

Black Women Are The Touchstone By Which All That Is Human Can Be Measured.

I'm A Writer In The World. I Translate The Confusion That I Might Feel, The Dread That I Know I Feel, Moving Towards Some Other Place, Moving Away From Puny Language, From All That Dread Into Some Other Kind Of Language.

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

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

Beloved, You Are My Sister, You Are My Daughter, You Are My Face; You Are Me.

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

In Becoming An American, From Europe, What One Has In Common With That Other Immigrant Is Contempt For Me-it's Nothing Else But Color.

Two Parents Can't Raise A Child Any More Than One. You Need A Whole Community - Everybody - To Raise A Child. And The Little Nuclear Family Is A Paradigm That Just Doesn't Work. It Doesn't Work For White People Or For Black People. Why Are We Hanging Onto It, I Don't Know. It Isolates People Into Little Units - People Need A Larger Unit.

Somebody Has To Take Responsibility For Being A Leader.

Taking Responsibility

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

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

Can't Nothing Heal Without Pain, You Know.

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.

Write About Something You Don't Know. And Don't Be Scared, Ever.

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.

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

The Pieces I Am, She Gather Them And Gave Them Back To Me In All The Right Order.

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.

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.

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.

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

Everything Depends On Knowing How Much,” She Said, And “good Is Knowing When To Stop.

Black People Are Victims Of An Enormous Amount Of Violence. None Of Those Things Can Take Place Without The Complicity Of The People Who Run The Schools And The City.

It's Always Seemed To Me That Black People's Grace Has Been With What They Do With Language. In Lorrain, Ohio, When I Was A Child, I Went To School With And Heard The Stories Of Mexicans, Italians, And Greeks, And I Listened. I Remember Their Language, And A Lot Of It Is Marvelous. But When I Think Of Things My Mother Or Father Or Aunts Used To Say, It Seems The Most Absolutely Striking Thing In The World.

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.

My Daddy's Face Is A Study. Winter Moves Into It And Presides There. His Eyes Become A Cliff Of Snow Threatening To Avalanche, His Eyebrows Bend Like Black Limbs Of Leafless Trees. His Skin Takes On The Pale Cheerless Yellow Of Winter Sun; For A Jaw He Has The Edges Of A Snowbound Field Dotted With Stubble; His High Forehead Is The Frozen Sweep Of The Erie.

I Dream A Dream That Dreams Back At Me.

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.

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

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

Where Do You Get The Right To Decide Our Lives? I'll Tell You Where. From That Little Hog's Gut That Hangs Between Your Legs. Well, Let Me Tell You Something... You Will Need More Than That. I Don't Know Where You Will Get It Or Who Will Give It To You, But Mark My Words, You Will Need More Than That.... You Are A Sad, Pitiful, Stupid, Selfish, Hateful Man. I Hope Your Little Hog's Gut Stands You In Good Stead, And You Take Good Care Of It, Because You Don't Have Anything Else.

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.

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

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

There Are Some Very Powerful Contributions To Knowledge In The Scientific World Or The Legal World, But Art Is Singular. That's Why Every Dictator Gets Rid Of The Artists First. They Burn The Books And Execute The Artists First. Then They Get On With Whatever Else They're Interested In. Art Might Do Something. It's Dangerous.

Listening To The Doves In Alfred, Georgia, And Having Neither The Right Nor The Permission To Enjoy It Because In That Place Mist, Doves, Sunlight, Copper Dirt, Moon-everything Belonged To The Men Who Had The Guns. . . . So You Protected Yourself And Loved Small. . . . A Woman, A Child, A Brother-a Big Love Like That Would Split You Wide Open In Alfred, Georgia. . . . To Get To A Place Where You Could Love Anything You Chose-not To Need Permission For Desire-well Now, That Was Freedom

When A Man Angers You, He Conquers You.

Love Is Or It Ain't. Thin Love Ain't Love At All.

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?

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.

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

In Fact Her Maturity And Blood Kinship Converted Her Passion To Fever, So It Was More Affliction Than Affection. It Literally Knocked Her Down At Night, And Raised Her Up In The Morning, For When She Dragged Herself Off To Bed, Having Spent Another Day Without His Presence, Her Heart Beat Like A Gloved Fist Against Her Ribs. And In The Morning, Long Before She Was Fully Awake, She Felt A Longing So Bitter And Tight It Yanked Her Out Of A Sleep Swept Clean Of Dreams.

I Feel Like Today We Always Glorify The Young, Just-plucked-from-college Writer. But It's Much Harder To Start Writing Later, In Middle Age, Struggling On A Book Around A Full-time Job And Family.

Being Good To Somebody Is Just Like Being Mean To Somebody. Risky. You Don't Get Nothing For It.

You Rely On A Sentence To Say More Than The Denotation And The Connotation; You Revel In The Smoke That The Words Send Up.

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

Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.

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

...the Change Was Adjustment Without Improvement.

The Function Of Freedom Is To Free Someone Else.

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

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

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.

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 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.

A Coward With A Gun Is The Most Dangerous Person In The World

I Don't Wait To Be Struck By Lightning And I Don't Need Certain Slants Of Light In Order To Be Able To Write.

We're All Surrounded By What I Call Faux Language, Fake Language Of Commerce, Of News Media.

I Think Women Dwell Quite A Bit On The Duress Under Which They Work, On How Hard It Is Just To Do It At All. We Are Traditionally Rather Proud Of Ourselves For Having Slipped Creative Work In There Between The Domestic Chores And Obligations. I'm Not Sure We Deserve Such Big A-pluses For All That.

I Don't Think Anybody Cares About Unwed Mothers Unless They're Black Or Poor. The Question Is Not Morality, The Question Is Money. That's What We're Upset About.

It Is Sheer Good Fortune To Miss Somebody Long Before They Leave You.

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

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

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

Sometimes Joyce Is Hilarious. I Read Finnegans Wake After Graduate School And I Had The Great Good Fortune Of Reading It Without Any Help. I Don't Know If I Read It Right, But It Was Hilarious! I Laughed Constantly! I Didn't Know What Was Going On For Whole Blocks But It Didn't Matter Because I Wasn't Going To Be Graded On It. I Think The Reason Why Everyone Still Has So Much Fun With Shakespeare Is Because He Didn't Have Any Literary Critic. He Was Just Doing It; And There Were No Reviews Except For People Throwing Stuff On Stage. He Could Just Do It.

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.

Shallow Believers Prefer A Shallow God.

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

Usually I Try To Be There By Six. Everything Has Been Taken Off The Walls So That There's Nothing To Arrest My Sight. On The Bed I Have Roget's Thesaurus, A Dictionary, A Bible, And A Deck Of Playing Cards.

You Can't Own A Human Being. You Can't Lose What You Don't Own. Suppose You Did Own Him. Could You Really Love Somebody Who Was Absolutely Nobody Without You? You Really Want Somebody Like That? Somebody Who Falls Apart When You Walk Out The Door? You Don't, Do You? And Neither Does He. You're Turning Over Your Whole Life To Him. Your Whole Life, Girl. And If It Means So Little To You That You Can Just Give It Away, Hand It To Him, Then Why Should It Mean Any More To Him? He Can't Value You More Than You Value Yourself.

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.

For Lo, The Winter Is Past, The Rain Is Over And Gone; The Flowers Appear On The Earth; The Time Of The Singing Of Birds Is Come, And The Voice Of The Turtledove Is Heard In Our Land.

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

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

Love Just Seems To Make Life Not Just Livable, But A Gallant, Gallant Event.

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

There Is Nothing Of Any Consequence In Education, In The Economy, In City Planning, In Social Policy That Does Not Concern Black People.

Being Able To Laugh Got Me Through.

A Lot Of Black People Believe That Jews In This Country Have Become White. They Behave Like White People Rather Than Jewish People.

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 ."

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

Human Relations

Human Relationships

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

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.

Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart.

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

All Art Is Knowing When To Stop.

The Men Began To Trade Tales Of Atrocities, First Stories They Had Heard, Then Those They'd Witnessed, And Finally The Things That Had Happened To Themselves. A Litany Of Personal Humiliation, Outrage, And Anger Turned Sicklelike Back To Themselves As Humor. They Laughed Then, Uproariously, About The Speed With Which They Had Run, The Pose They Had Assumed, The Ruse They Had Invented To Escape Or Decrease Some Threat To Their Manliness, Their Humanness. All But Empire State, Who Stood, Broom In Hand And Drop-lipped, With The Expression Of A Very Intelligent Ten-year-old.

As You Enter Positions Of Trust And Power, Dream A Little Before You Think.

Risky, Thought Paul D, Very Risky. For A Used-to-be-slave Woman To Love Anything That Much Was Dangerous, Especially If It Was Her Children She Had Settled On To Love. The Best Thing, He Knew, Was To Love Just A Little Bit, So When They Broke Its Back, Or Shoved It In A Croaker Sack, Well, Maybe You'd Have A Little Love Left Over For The Next One.

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

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.

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

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.

In This Country American Means White. Everybody Else Has To Hyphenate.

Not Knowing It Was Hard; Knowing It Was Harder

All Important Things Are Hard.

Important Things

When You Stiffen, You Know That Whatever You Stiffen About Is Very Important. The Stuff Is Important, The Fear Itself Is Information.

In A Way, Her Strangeness, Her Naiveté, Her Craving For The Other Half Of Her Equation Was The Consequence Of An Idle Imagination. Had She Paints, Or Clay, Or Knew The Discipline Of The Dance, Or Strings, Had She Anything To Engage Her Tremendous Curiosity And Her Gift For Metaphor, She Might Have Exchanged The Restlessness And Preoccupation With Whim For An Activity That Provided Her With All She Yearned For. And Like An Artist With No Art Form, She Became Dangerous.

The Best Art Is Political And You Ought To Be Able To Make It Unquestionably Political And Irrevocably Beautiful At The Same Time.

Definitions Belong To The Definer, Not The Defined.

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

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.

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.

I Like Marriage. The Idea.

Jealousy We Understood And Thought Natural... But Envy Was A Strange, New Feeling For Us. And All The Time We Knew That Maureen Peal Was Not The Enemy And Not Worthy Of Such Intense Hatred. The Thing To Fear Was The Thing That Made Her Beautiful, And Not Us.

When There Is Pain, There Are No Words. All Pain Is The Same.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lonely Was Much Better Than Alone.

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

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.

...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)

[obama Is ] Creative Imagination Which Coupled With Brilliance Equals Wisdom . . . [he Is] The Man For This Time.

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.

Women's Rights Is Not Only An Abstraction, A Cause; It Is Also A Personal Affair. It Is Not Only About Us; It Is Also About Me And You. Just The Two Of Us.

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

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

I Had Only One Desire: To Dismember It. To See Of What It Was Made, To Discover The Dearness, To Find The Beauty, The Desirability That Had Escaped Me, But Apparently Only Me.

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.

The Isolation, The Separateness, Is Always A Part Of Any Utopia.

Liberation Means You Don't Have To Be Silenced.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

There Is No Civilization That Did Not Begin With Art, Whether It Was Drawing A Line In The Sand, Painting A Cave Or Dancing.

...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.

If Happiness Is Anticipation With Certainty, We Were Happy.

Well, Feel This, Why Don't You? Feel How It Feels To Have A Bed To Sleep In And Somebody There Not Worrying You To Death About What You Got To Do Each Day To Deserve It. Feel How That Feels. And If That Don't Get It, Feel How It Feels To Be A Colored Woman Roaming The Roads With Anything God Made Liable To Jump On You. Feel That.

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

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.

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

You Your Own Best Thing, Sethe. You Are.

...the City Is What They Want It To Be: Thriftless, Warm, Scary And Full Of Amiable Strangers. No Wonder They Forget Pebbly Creeks And When They Do Not Forget The Sky Completely Think Of It As A Tiny Piece Of Information About The Time Of Day Or Night.

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

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

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.

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?

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