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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.
-Toni Morrison
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In Ohio Seasons Are

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

Understanding the Quote: "in ohio seasons are theatrical. each one enters like a prima donna,..."

This quote by Toni Morrison reflects deeply on the theme of ohio. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Ohio, People, World, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Toni Morrison interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is celebrated for insightful thoughts on ohio and people. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Ohio
People
World
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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.
Kids
Evil
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All Paradises, All Utopias Are Designed By Who Is Not There, By The People Who Are Not Allowed In.
People
Paradise
Utopia
At Some Point In Life, The World's Beauty Becomes Enough.
Beauty
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Lonely Was Much Better Than Alone.
Lonely
Long Before I Was A Success, My Parents Made Me Feel Like I Could Be One.
Long
Parent
Made
Of Course I'm A Black Writer... I'm Not Just A Black Writer, But Categories Like Black Writer, Woman Writer And Latin American Writer Aren't Marginal Anymore. We Have To Acknowledge That The Thing We Call "literature" Is More Pluralistic Now, Just As Society Ought To Be. The Melting Pot Never Worked. We Ought To Be Able To Accept On Equal Terms Everybody From The Hasidim To Walter Lippmann, From The Rastafarians To Ralph Bunche.
Latin
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Love Is Divine Only And Difficult Always. If You Think It Is Easy You Are A Fool. If You Think It Is Natural You Are Blind. It Is A Learned Application Without Reason Or Motive Except That It Is God.
Love
Inspirational
Thinking
My World Did Not Shrink Because I Was A Black Female Writer. It Just Got Bigger.
History
Black
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Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.
Laughter
Tears
Serious
It's Been Mentioned Or Suggested That Paradise Will Not Be Well Studied, Because It's About This Unimportant Intellectual Topic, Which Is Religion.
Intellectual
Paradise
Topics
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.
Fun
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In My Mother's Church, Everybody Read The Bible And It Was Mostly About Music. My Mother Had The Most Beautiful Voice I Have Ever Heard In My Life. She Could Sing Anything - Classical, Jazz, Blues, Opera. And People Came From Long Distances To That Little Church She Went To - African Methodist Episcopal, The Ame Church She Belonged To - Just Hear Her.
Beautiful
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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.
Real
Believe
Artist
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.
Butterfly
Tangible
Reeds
Sweet, She Thought. He Must Think I Can't Bear To Hear Him Say It. That After All I Have Told Him And After Telling Me How Many Feet I Have, "goodbye" Would Break Me To Pieces. Ain't That Sweet. "so Long," She Murmured From The Far Side Of The Trees.
Goodbye
Sweet
Thinking
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.
Crazy
Wish
World
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.
Race
Racism
Social
I Know That My Books Are Worthy, Which Is Separate From Me.
Book
Worthy
Knows
Black People Have Always Been Used As A Buffer In This Country Between Powers To Prevent Class War.
Country
War
Class
Anything Dead Coming Back To Life Hurts.
Hurt
Beloved
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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.
Children
Thinking
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No One Ever Talks About The Moment You Found That You Were White. Or The Moment You Found Out You Were Black. That's A Profound Revelation. The Minute You Find That Out, Something Happens. You Have To Renegotiate Everything.
White
Everything Happens For A Reason
Profound
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.
Strong
Children
Light
Evil Is So Seductive. It Needs To Grind You Up And Make You Its Slave.
Evil
Seductive
Needs
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.
Children
Eight
Bread
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.
Ideas
Should Have
World
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.
War
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Men
He Leans Over And Takes Her Hand. With The Other He Touches Her Face. ‘you Your Best Thing, Sethe. You Are.’ His Holding Fingers Are Holding Hers. ‘me? Me?
Hands
Faces
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If We Had No Language We'd Have Nothing.
Language
Ifs
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.
Believe
Thinking
Political
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.
Block
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Perhaps That's What All Human Relationships Boiled Down To: Would You Save My Life? Or Would You Take It?
Humans
Human Relations
Human Relationships
If A Negro Got Legs He Ought To Use Them. Sit Down Too Long, Somebody Will Figure Out A Way To Tie Them Up.
Ties
Long
Use
I Am In The Position Of Judging People By The Best They've Ever Done Rather Than The Worst.
Judging People
Done
Worst
Sifting Daylight Dissolves The Memory, Turns It Into Dust Motes Floating In Light.
Memories
Light
Dust
Definitions Belong To The Definers, Not The Defined.
Definitions
Beloved
Defined
Black People's Music Is In A Class By Itself And Always Has Been. There's Nothing Like It. The Reason For That Is Because It Was Not Tampered With By White People. It Was Not On The Media. It Was Not Anywhere Except Where Black People Were. And It Is One Of The Art Forms In Which Black People Decided What Is Good In It. Nobody Told Them. What Surfaced And What Floated To The Top, Were The Giants And The Best.
Art
Media
Class
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.
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Book
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.
Commitment
Justice
Not Good Enough
Not Knowing It Was Hard; Knowing It Was Harder
Knowing
Beloved
Harder
Adults, Older Girls, Shops, Magazines, Newspapers, Window Signs—all The World Had Agreed That A Blue-eyed, Yellow-haired, Pink-skinned Doll Was What Every Girl Child Treasured
Girl
Children
Blue
Beloved, You Are My Sister, You Are My Daughter, You Are My Face; You Are Me.
Mom
Daughter
Literature
Gimme Hate, Lord,” He Whimpered. “i’ll Take Hate Any Day. But Don’t Give Me Love. I Can’t Take No More Love, Lord. I Can’t Carry It...it’s Too Heavy. Jesus, You Know, You Know All About It. Ain’t It Heavy? Jesus? Ain’t Love Heavy?
Jesus
Hate
Giving
I Tell My Students, 'when You Get These Jobs That You Have Been So Brilliantly Trained For, Just Remember That Your Real Job Is That If You Are Free, You Need To Free Somebody Else. If You Have Some Power, Then Your Job Is To Empower Somebody Else. This Is Not Just A Grab-bag Candy Game.
Jobs
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You Looking Good." "devil's Confusion. He Lets Me Look Good Long As I Feel Bad.
Long
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It Was Becoming A Habit-this Concentration On Things Behind Him. Almost As Though There Were No Future To Be Had. *milkman*
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Evil Is Just Sort Of Ultimately Boring. The Good Thing Is Just Complicated. It's More Provocative To Me And More Stimulating To Me.
Evil
Complicated
Boring
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.
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Cost
You Been Gone Too Long, Sula. Not Too Long, But Maybe Too Far.
Long
Gone
No Matter What All Your Teeth And Wet Fingers Anticipated, There Was No Accounting For The Way That Simple Joy Could Shake You.
Simple
Joy
Teeth
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.
Names
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Down And
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.
Hands
Looks
Remakes
Writing Is Really A Way Of Thinking--not Just Feeling But Thinking About Things That Are Disparate, Unresolved, Mysterious, Problematic Or Just Sweet.
Sweet
Writing
Thinking
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.
Baby
Hurt
Funny Things
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
Eye
Birth Life And Death
Love Is Or It Ain't. Thin Love Ain't Love At All.
Love
Inspiring
Sad Love
For A Long Time I Was Convinced That The Conflict Between Jewish People And Black People In This Country Was A Media Event.
Country
Media
Long
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.
Giving Up
Stuff
Bliss
When There Is Pain, There Are No Words. All Pain Is The Same.
Sympathy
Pain
Suffering
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.
Writing
People
Want
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.
Ideas
Silence
Desire
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.
Wisdom
Civilization
Library
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.
Suicide
Years
Dying
I Always Start Out With An Idea, Even A Boring Idea, That Becomes A Question I Don't Have Answers To.
Writing
Ideas
Answers
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.
Inspiration
Writing
Compelled
I Want To Feel What I Feel. What's Mine. Even If It's Not Happiness, Whatever That Means. Because You're All You've Got.
Mean
Want
Feels
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.
Differences
Sublime
Meaning Of Life
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.
Hate
Hatred
Leaving
Each Member Of The Family In His Own Cell Of Consciousness, Each Making His Own Patchwork Quilt Of Reality - Collecting Fragments Of Experience Here, Pieces Of Information There. From The Tiny Impressions Gleaned From One Another, They Created A Sense Of Belonging And Tried To Make Do With The Way They Found Each Other.
Quilts
Reality
Cells
Black Literature Is Taught As Sociology, As Tolerance, Not As A Serious, Rigorous Art Form.
Art
African American
Tolerance
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.
Eye
World
Waste
What's The World For You If You Can't Make It Up The Way You Want It?
World
Want
Way
I Have A Lot Of Respect For Readers Because I'm A Reader. That's How I Got Into Writing.
Writing
Reader
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
Girl
Eye
Heart
Movements Toward Freedom And The Self-respect That Comes From Something Other Than What People Think Is Their Most Important Feature.
Thinking
Self
People
How Soon Country People Forget. When They Fall In Love With A City It Is Forever, And It Is Like Forever. As Though There Never Was A Time When They Didn't Love It. The Minute They Arrive At The Train Station Or Get Off The Ferry And Glimpse The Wide Streets And The Wasteful Lamps Lighting Them, They Know They Are Born For It. There, In A City, They Are Not So Much New As Themselves: Their Stronger, Riskier Selves.
Country
Falling In Love
Cities
Sometimes What I Write On The Page Frightens Me, So I Feel Free When I Write, But I Don't Feel Safe.
Writing
Safe
Pages
Misery Don't Call Ahead. That's Why You Have To Stay Awake - Otherwise It Just Walks On In Your Door.
Doors
Misery
Awake
[obama Is ] Creative Imagination Which Coupled With Brilliance Equals Wisdom . . . [he Is] The Man For This Time.
Men
Imagination
Creative
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.
Baby
Writing
Way
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.
Broken Heart
Running
Men
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.
Writing
White
Able
There Is No Time For Despair, No Place For Self-pity, No Need For Silence, No Room For Fear. We Speak, We Write, We Do Language. That Is How Civilizations Heal.
Writing
Self
Civilization
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.
Editors
Dumb
Care
You Rely On A Sentence To Say More Than The Denotation And The Connotation; You Revel In The Smoke That The Words Send Up.
Connotation
Sentences
Rely
Oppressive Language Does More Than Represent Violence; It Is Violence; Does More Than Represent The Limits Of Knowledge; It Limits Knowledge.
Black
Doe
Limits
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.
Moving
Eye
Winter
All Water Has A Perfect Memory And Is Forever Trying To Get Back To Where It Was.
Nature
Memories
Reality
Love Is Divine Only And Difficult Always.
Love Is
Divine
Difficult
Today Is Always Here,' Said Sethe. 'tomorrow, Never.
Today
Tomorrow
Said
You Need A Whole Community To Raise A Child. I Have Raised Two Children, Alone.
Children
Two
Community
Tell Us What It Is To Be A Woman So That We May Know What It Is To Be A Man. What Moves At The Margin. What It Is To Have No Home In This Place. To Be Set Adrift From The One You Knew. What It Is To Live At The Edge Of Towns That Cannot Bear Your Company.
Women
Moving
Home
You Got Two Feet, Sethe, Not Four." He Said, And Right Then A Forest Sprang Up Between Them; Tactless And Quiet.
Two
Feet
Four
I Know There's Some Poetry That Sort Of Sounds Like Daisies, But Most Of The Good Poetry Is Also [political], You Can Feel The Heartbeat; It's About Some Situation That Concerns Human Beings Under Duress. It's Suggesting A Solution, Or Just Acknowledging That [the Situation] Exists. Art Does That.
Art
Political
Duress
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.
Mean
Thinking
House
Clever, But Schoolteacher Beat Him Anyway To Show Him That Definitions Belonged To The Definers - Not The Defined.
Clever
Definitions
Beloved
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.
Light
Hands
Lovely
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.
Children
Husband
Mean
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.
Spring
Eye
Pits
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.
Writing
Waiting
Trying
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?
Dark
Night
Bird
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.
Home
Thinking
Space
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.
Peace
War
Reading
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.
Wall
Taken
Writing
Passion Is Never Enough; Neither Is Skill.
Passion
Skills
Enough
Art Invites Us To Know Beauty And To Solicit It, Summon It, From Even The Most Tragic Of Circumstances.
Art
Bearing Witness
Circumstances
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?
Moon
Sky
Choices
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.
Dark
Impact
Skin Color
Everything I've Ever Done, In The Writing World, Has Been To Expand Articulation, Rather Than To Close It.
Writing
Done
World
I Sometimes Lose Interest In The Characters And Get Much More Interested In The Trees And Animals.
Character
Animal
Tree
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.
Art
Order
Restoration
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.
And Love
Care
Language
It Is Sheer Good Fortune To Miss Somebody Long Before They Leave You.
Heartbreak
Long
Missing
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
Squares
Sweat
Creating
I Dream A Dream That Dreams Back At Me.
Dream
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.
Men
Feminist
Black
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.
Giving Up
Vanity
Tails
Shallow Believers Prefer A Shallow God.
Shallow
Believer
Black Women Are The Touchstone By Which All That Is Human Can Be Measured.
Black
Black Women
Humans
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.
Believe
Writing
Dark
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.
Brother
Kids
Hatred
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?
Grandma
Writing
Tired
You Have To Be Willing To Think The Unthinkable.
Thinking
Unthinkable
Willing
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.
Clever
Winter
Cities
Like Any Artist Without An Art Form, She Became Dangerous.
Art
Artist
Form
If Writing Is Thinking And Discovery And Selection And Order And Meaning, It Is Also Awe And Reverence And Mystery And Magic.
Writing
Thinking
Discovery
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.]
Anger
Thinking
Skills
When You Stiffen, You Know That Whatever You Stiffen About Is Very Important. The Stuff Is Important, The Fear Itself Is Information.
Important
Information
Stuff
A Friend Gathers All The Pieces And Gives Them Back In The Right Order.
Order
Giving
Pieces
Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart.
Heart
Faces
Speak
All Art Is Knowing When To Stop.
Art
Knowing
Art Is
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.
Writing
Thinking
Discovery
We Mistook Violence For Passion, Indolence For Leisure, And Thought Recklessness Was Freedom.
Passion
Leisure
Violence
Write About Something You Don't Know. And Don't Be Scared, Ever.
Writing
Scared
Knows
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.
Girl
Fall
Mean
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.
Children
Home
Two
Make A Difference, Does It? You Stay The Night Here Snake Get You.
Night
Snakes
Differences
Books Are A Form Of Political Action. Books Are Knowledge. Books Are Reflection. Books Change Your Mind.
Book
Reflection
Political
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?
Order
Imagination
Silence
Political Doesn't Necessarily Mean You Have An Agenda.
Mean
Political
Agendas
In This Country American Means White. Everybody Else Has To Hyphenate.
Inspirational
Country
Mean
The Peace I Am Thinking Of Is The Dance Of An Open Mind When It Engages Another Equally Open One.
Thinking
Diversity
Tolerance
When A Man Angers You, He Conquers You.
Men
Conquer
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.
Love You
Eye
Heart
I Want To Discourage You From Choosing Anything Or Making Any Decision Simply Because It Is Safe. Things Of Value Seldom Are
Decision
Safe
Want
Beauty Was Not Simply Something To Behold; It Was Something One Could Do.
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.
Father
Real
Thinking
A Sister Can Be Seen As Someone Who Is Both Ourselves And Very Much Not Ourselves - A Special Kind Of Double.
Sister
Sibling
Special
American Means White, And Africanist People Struggle To Make The Term Applicable To Themselves With Ethnicity And Hyphen After Hyphen After Hyphen.
Struggle
Mean
Ethnicity
New York Is The Last True City.
New York
Cities
Lasts
...black Women Write Differently From White Women. This Is The Most Marked Difference Of All Those Combinations Of Black And White, Male And Female. It's Not So Much That Women Write Differently From Men, But That Black Women Write Differently From White Women. Black Men Don't Write Very Differently From White Men.
Writing
Black And White
Men
Don't Ever Think I Fell For You, Or Fell Over You. I Didn't Fall In Love, I Rose In It.
Love
Fall
Thinking
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.
People
Racist
Exclusion
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.
Self
Hands
Naked
Would It Be All Right? Would It Be All Right To Go Ahead And Feel? Go Ahead And Count On Something?
Beloved
Feels
My Children Are Delightful People, Whom I Would Love Even If They Weren't My Children.
Children
People
Delightful
Sweet, Crazy Conversations Full Of Half Sentences, Daydreams And Misunderstandings More Thrilling Than Understanding Could Ever Be.
Sister
Sweet
Crazy
I Get Angry About Things, Then Go On And Work.
Inspiring
Goes On
Angry
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.
War
Arrogance
Slavery
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.
Spring
Rain
Flower
And Wouldn't You Know He'd Be A Singing Man.
Men
Singing
Beloved
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.
Strong
Lying
Maturity
At Some Point In Life The World's Beauty Becomes Enough. You Don't Need To Photograph, Paint Or Even Remember It. It Is Enough.
Life
Beauty
Thank You
He Said, 'always. Always.
Said
As A Writer Reading, I Came To Realize The Obvious: The Subject Of The Dream Is The Dreamer.
Dream
Book
Reading
Language Alone Protects Us From The Scariness Of Things With No Names. Language Alone Is Meditation.
Names
Meditation
Language
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.
War
School
Europe
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!
Brother
Kissing
Land
Whatever Happens, Whether You Get Rich Or Stay Poor, Ruin Your Health Or Live To Old Age, You Always End Up Back Where You Started: Hungry For The One Thing Everybody Loses - Young Loving.
Age
Ruins
Rich
I Type In One Place, But I Write All Over The House.
Writing
House
Type
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.
Running
School
Cities
Don’t Beg Anybody For Anything, Especially Love.
Love
Self Respect
Humiliation
If There's A Book You Really Want To Read, But It Hasn't Been Written Yet, Then You Must Write It.
Inspirational
Happiness
Attitude
I Didn't Fall In Love, I Rose In It.
Falling In Love
Fall
Rose
Deep, Deep Trouble. Can't Rival The Dead For Love. Lose Every Time.
Rivals
Trouble
Loses
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.
Country
Mother
Breakup
...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.
Dream
Alive
World
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.
Country
Juice
Littles
Some Literature Is Knowledge, Some Is Just Data. But If I Can Get A "happy" Ending - Which Is When For The Characters I'm Writing About, Something Happens That They Move From Wherever They Are In The Beginning To Knowledge Or Wisdom, They Know Something They Never Would Have Acknowledged Or Realized If It Hadn't Been For My Book - That For Me Is What Literature Does.
Moving
Book
Character
What I'm Doing Ain't About Hating White People. It's About Loving Us.
Hate
White
People
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.
Moving
Dark
Night
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.
Life
People
Needs
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.
Finishing It
Finishing
Looks
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.
Dream
Morning
Sleep
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.
Inspirational
Graduation
Mean
Freeing Yourself Was One Thing; Claiming Ownership Of That Freed Self Was Another.
Freedom
Self
Beloved
Home Is Memory, Home Is Your History, Home Is Where You Work. Some People Want To Abandon It And Become Truly Local. But The Questions Are All There.
Memories
Home
People
I'm Always Annoyed About Why Black People Have To Bear The Brunt Of Everybody Else's Contempt. If We Are Not Totally Understanding And Smiling, Suddenly We're Demons.
Smile
People
Annoyed
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.
Couple
Writing
Thinking
Black Boys Became Criminalized. I Was In Constant Dread For Their Lives, Because They Were Targets Everywhere. They Still Are.
Fear
Boys
Black
You Free. Nothing And Nobody Is Obliged To Save You But You.
Obliged
We Die. That May Be The Meaning Of Life. But We Do Language. That May Be The Measure Of Our Lives.
Communication
Meaning Of Life
May
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.
Inspirational
Mean
Elude You
Literature, It Seems To Me, Is Wisdom.
Literature
Seems
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 ."
Use
Language
Bigs
The Race Thing Is Sort Of A Misnomer. It's Just The Human Race, Right? That's It. The Rest Of It, And Racism, Is Socially Constructed. Nobody Is Born Racist, No One. What Happens Is Other Things That Are Usually Based On Power, Money, Feeling Good About Yourself, Or Bad About Yourself, Those Things Play Into Hating Other People For Whatever Reason.
Hate
Race
Play
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.
Knowing
Ugly
Mysterious
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.
Art
Discipline
Imagination
If Happiness Is Anticipation With Certainty, We Were Happy.
Anticipation
Certainty
Ifs
Can't Nothing Heal Without Pain, You Know.
Pain
Heal
Without Pain
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