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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.

-Toni Morrison

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Love Is Never Any

Toni Morrison

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Meaning Of Life

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.

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

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

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

A Dream Is Just A Nightmare With Lipstick.

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

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

Sometimes What I Write On The Page Frightens Me, So I Feel Free When I Write, But I Don't Feel Safe.

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

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

If You're Going To Hold Someone Down You're Going To Have To Hold On By The Other End Of The Chain. You Are Confined By Your Own Repression.

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.

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.

A Bestseller Is A Book That Non-book Buyers Buy

Lonely, Ain't It? Yes, But My Lonely Is Mine. Now Your Lonely Is Somebody Else's. Made By Somebody Else And Handed To You. Ain't That Something? A Secondhand Lonely.

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.

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

...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.

Black And White

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

The Ability Of Writers To Imagine What Is Not The Self, To Familiarize The Strange And Mystify The Familiar, Is The Test Of Their Power.

There Is Really Nothing More To Say - Except Why. But Since Why Is Difficult To Handle, One Must Take Refuge In How.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Bearing Witness

You Your Own Best Thing, Sethe. You Are.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Am A Moralist. I Worry.

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?

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.

Falling In Love

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

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.

Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart.

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.

Not Knowing It Was Hard; Knowing It Was Harder

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.

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.

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.

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

He Wants To Put His Story Next To Hers.

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.

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

The Nobel Prize Is The Best Thing That Can Happen To A Writer In Terms Of How It Affects Your Contracts, The Publishers, And The Seriousness With Which Your Work Is Taken. On The Other Hand, It Does Interfere With Your Private Life, Or It Can If You Let It, And It Has Zero Effect On The Writing. It Doesn't Help You Write Better And If You Let It, It Will Intimidate You About Future Projects.

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

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.

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

Some Native American Writers Enjoy Being Called Native American Writers.

Native American

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.

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.

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 Think One Of The Reasons I'm So Thrilled With Writing Is Because It Is An Act Of Reading For Me At The Same Time, Which Is Why My Revisions Are So Sustained.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I Type In One Place, But I Write All Over The House.

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.

If You Surrendered To The Air, You Could Ride 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 Don't Do The Things Other People Call "play."

Narrative Is Radical, Creating Us At The Very Moment It Is Being Created.

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

He Said, 'always. Always.

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.

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

Working Together

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

Much Handled Things Are Always Soft(27).

I'm Not Entangled In Shaping My Work According To Other People's Views Of How I Should Have Done It.

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.

Unless Carefree, Mother Love Was A Killer.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Love Is Divine Only And Difficult Always.

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

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.

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

If Writing Is Thinking And Discovery And Selection And Order And Meaning, It Is Also Awe And Reverence And Mystery And Magic.

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.

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.

Everything Happens For A Reason

...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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The 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.

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

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

The Function Of Freedom Is To Free Someone Else.

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.

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

Which Was What Love Was: Unmotivated Respect.

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.

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

...when The Little Boy Discovered, At Four, The Same Thing Mr. Smith Had Learned Earlier -- That Only Birds And Planes Could Fly -- He Lost All Interest In Himself.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

You Are Your Best Thing

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

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

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

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

All Art Is Knowing When To Stop.

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.

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.

If Happiness Is Anticipation With Certainty, We Were Happy.

Grown Don't Mean Nothing To A Mother. A Child Is A Child. They Get Bigger, Older, But Grown? What's That Supposed To Mean? In My Heart It Don't Mean A Thing.

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.

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

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

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.

Something That Is Loved Is Never Lost.

Clever, But Schoolteacher Beat Him Anyway To Show Him That Definitions Belonged To The Definers - Not The Defined.

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.

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 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.

Love Is Never Any Better Than The Lover.

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

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

Inspirational Life

Birth Life And Death

There In The Center Of That Silence Was Not Eternity But The Death Of Time And A Loneliness So Profound The Word Itself Had No Meaning.

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

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.

We Mistook Violence For Passion, Indolence For Leisure, And Thought Recklessness Was Freedom.

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

Somebody Has To Take Responsibility For Being A Leader.

Taking Responsibility

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

Evil Is So Seductive. It Needs To Grind You Up And Make You Its Slave.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.

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.

A Son Ain't What A Woman Say. A Son Is What A Man Do.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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. No Record Of It Needs To Be Kept And You Don't Need Someone To Share It With Or Tell It To. When That Happens — That Letting Go — You Let Go Because You Can.

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

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.

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