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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.
-Toni Morrison
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Pain. I Seem To

Toni Morrison
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "pain. i seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for..."

This quote by Toni Morrison reflects deeply on the theme of pain. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Pain, Eye, Storm, 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 pain and eye. 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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Pain
Eye
Storm
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I Know The World Is Bruised And Bleeding, And Though It Is Important Not To Ignore Its Pain, It Is Also Critical To Refuse To Succumb To Its Malevolence. Like Failure, Chaos Contains Information That Can Lead To Knowledge - Even Wisdom. Like Art.
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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.
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Unless Carefree, Mother Love Was A Killer.
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Anger Is Better. There Is A Sense Of Being In Anger. A Reality And Presence. An Awareness Of Worth. It Is A Lovely Surging.
Reality
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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.
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I Know It's Trash: Just Another Story Made Up To Scare Wicked Females And Correct Unruly Children. But It's All I Have. I Know I Need Something Else. Something Better. Like A Story That Shows How Brazen Women Can Take A Good Man Down. I Can Hum To That.
Children
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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.
Color
Europe
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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.
Baby
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Birth, Life, And Death― Each Took Place On The Hidden Side Of A Leaf.
Life
Death
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The Enemy Is Not Men. The Enemy Is The Concept Of Patriarchy, The Concept Of Patriarchy As The Way To Run The World Or Do Things.
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My Father Saw Two Black Men Lynched On His Street In Cartersville, As A Child. And I Think Seeing Two Black Businessmen - Not Vagrants - Hanging From Trees As A Child Was Traumatic For Him.
Children
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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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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.
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There Is Nothing Of Any Consequence In Education, In The Economy, In City Planning, In Social Policy That Does Not Concern Black People.
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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.
Peace
Ties
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What's Interesting About Writing Is The Invention, The Creative Thing. Writing About Myself Is A Yawn.
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I'm Interested In The Way In Which The Past Affects The Present And I Think That If We Understand A Good Deal More About History, We Automatically Understand A Great More About Contemporary Life.
Thinking
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Oppressive Language Does More Than Represent Violence; It Is Violence; Does More Than Represent The Limits Of Knowledge; It Limits Knowledge.
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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.
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A Dream Is Just A Nightmare With Lipstick.
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So This Is What Insanity Is. Not Goofy Behavior, But Watching A Sudden Change In The World You Used To Know.
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When I'm Not Creating Or Focusing On Something I Can Imagine Or Invent, I Think I Go Back Over My Life - I Don't Recommend This By The Way - And You Pick Up, Oh, What'd You Do That For? Why Didn't You Understand This?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I Have Only To Break Into The Tightness Of A Strawberry, And I See Summer - Its Dust And Lowering Skies.
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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.
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Lay My Head On The Railroad Line. Train Come Along; Pacify My Mind.
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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.
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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.
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I Have A Lot Of Respect For Readers Because I'm A Reader. That's How I Got Into Writing.
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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.
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The Vitality Of Language Lies In Its Ability To Limn The Actual, Imagined And Possible Lives Of Its Speakers, Readers, Writers.
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Beginning 'beloved' With Numerals Rather Than Spelled Out Numbers, It Was My Intention To Give The House An Identity Separate From The Street Or Even The City.
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Was It Hard? I Hope She Didn't Die Hard.' Sethe Shook Her Head. 'soft As Cream. Being Alive Was The Hard Part.
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If You Can Only Be Tall Because Someone Else Is On Their Knees, Then You Have A Serious Problem. And White People Have A Very, Very Serious Problem.
White
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Like Friendship, Hatred Needed More Than Physical Intimacy; It Wanted Creativity And Hard Work To Sustain Itself
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I Am A Moralist. I Worry.
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Not Knowing It Was Hard; Knowing It Was Harder
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...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.
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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?
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Books Are A Form Of Political Action. Books Are Knowledge. Books Are Reflection. Books Change Your Mind.
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Some Native American Writers Enjoy Being Called Native American Writers.
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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?
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Race Is The Least Reliable Information You Can Have About Someone. It's Real Information, But It Tells You Next To Nothing.
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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.
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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.
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And They Beat. The Women For Having Known Them And No More, No More; The Children For Having Been Them But Never Again. They Killed A Boss So Often And So Completely They Had To Bring Him Back To Life To Pulp Him One More Time. Tasting Hot Mealcake Among Pine Trees, They Beat It Away. Singing Love Songs To Mr. Death, They Smashed His Head. More Than The Rest, They Killed The Flirt Whom Folks Called Life For Leading Them On.
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How Exquisitely Human Was The Wish For Permanent Happiness, And How Thin Human Imagination Became Trying To Achieve It.
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We Read About How Ajax And Achilles Will Die For Each Other, But Very Little About The Friendship Of Women.
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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
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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.
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Misery Don't Call Ahead. That's Why You Have To Stay Awake - Otherwise It Just Walks On In Your Door.
Doors
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Lying
Miracle
Magic
Passion Is Never Enough; Neither Is Skill.
Passion
Skills
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Love Is Or It Ain't. Thin Love Ain't Love At All.
Love
Inspiring
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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.
Writing
School
College
I Couldn't Bear To Have People Mispronounce My Name. But The Person I Was Was This Person Who Was Called Chloe.
Names
People
Chloe
Black Literature Is Taught As Sociology, As Tolerance, Not As A Serious, Rigorous Art Form.
Art
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Tolerance
In Times Of Dread, Artists Must Never Choose To Remain Silent.
Artist
Silent
Dread
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Freedom
Self
Beloved
A Son Ain't What A Woman Say. A Son Is What A Man Do.
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Men
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.
Taken
Ignorance
Self
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.
Sheep
Sight
Here I Am
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Evil
Seductive
Needs
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Country
Juice
Littles
He Wants To Put His Story Next To Hers.
Stories
Want
Next
I'm Just Trying To Look At Something Without Blinking, To See What It Is Like, Or It Could Have Been Like, And How That Had Something To Do With The Way We Live Now. Novels Are Always Inquiries For Me.
Trying
Looks
Inquiry
Make A Difference, Does It? You Stay The Night Here Snake Get You.
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Snakes
Differences
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
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.
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Devil
Littles
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.
Clothes
People
House
Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart.
Heart
Faces
Speak
Black People Have Always Been Used As A Buffer In This Country Between Powers To Prevent Class War.
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War
Class
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Eight
Bread
The Formula For Creative Writing In High School Or College Is Write What You Know.
School
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College
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
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Men
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
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.
Summer
Girlfriend
Laughter
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Home
People
Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.
Laughter
Tears
Serious
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.
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Made
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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.
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Graduation
Art
When A Man Angers You, He Conquers You.
Men
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Writing
House
Type
Which Was What Love Was: Unmotivated Respect.
Unmotivated
Beloved, You Are My Sister, You Are My Daughter, You Are My Face; You Are Me.
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Daughter
Literature
An Innocent Man Is A Sin Before God. Inhuman And Therefore Untrustworthy. No Man Should Live Without Absorbing The Sins Of His Kind, The Foul Air Of His Innocence, Even If It Did Wilt Rows Of Angel Trumpets And Cause Them To Fall From Their Vines.
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Angel
Godly
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 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.
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Thinking
Space
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
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Thinking
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Names
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The Writing Is - I'm Free Of Pain. It's The Place Where I Live; It's Where I Have Control; It's Where Nobody Tells Me What To Do; It's Where My Imagination Is Fecund And I Am Really At My Best. Nothing Matters More In The World Or In My Body Or Anywhere When I'm Writing.
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Writing
Imagination
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Self Respect
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Writing
Way
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.
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Envy
Hatred
A Dead Hydrangea Is As Intricate And Lovely As One In Bloom. Bleak Sky Is As Seductive As Sunshine, Miniature Orange Trees Without Blossom Or Fruit Are Not Defective; They Are That.
Sunshine
Orange Trees
Sky
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.
Mean
Thinking
People
Sifting Daylight Dissolves The Memory, Turns It Into Dust Motes Floating In Light.
Memories
Light
Dust
Nelson Mandela Is, For Me, The Single Statesman In The World. The Single Statesman, In That Literal Sense, Who Is Not Solving All His Problems With Guns. It's Truly Unbelievable.
Gun
World
Problem
All Water Has A Perfect Memory And Is Forever Trying To Get Back To Where It Was.
Nature
Memories
Reality
Everywhere, Everywhere, Children Are The Scorned People Of The Earth.
Children
People
Earth
Narrative Is Radical, Creating Us At The Very Moment It Is Being Created.
Creating
Narrative
Revolutionary
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.
Mothers Day
Mom
Children
Along With The Idea Of Romantic Love, She Was Introduced To Another - Physical Beauty. Probably The Most Destructive Ideas In The History Of Human Thought. Both Originated In Envy, Thrived In Insecurity, And Ended In Disillusion.
Romantic Love
Ideas
Envy
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
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
Interesting
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 Always Know The Ending; That's Where I Start.
Knows
You Need A Whole Community To Raise A Child. I Have Raised Two Children, Alone.
Children
Two
Community
When She Awoke There Was A Melody In Her Head She Could Not Identify Or Recall Ever Hearing Before. 'perhaps I Made It Up,' She Thought. Then It Came To Her - The Name Of The Song And All Its Lyrics Just As She Had Heard It Many Times Before. She Sat On The Edge Of The Bed Thinking, 'there Aren't Any More New Songs And I Have Sung All The Ones There Are. I Have Sung Them All. I Have Sung All The Songs There Are.
Song
Thinking
Names
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
[obama Is ] Creative Imagination Which Coupled With Brilliance Equals Wisdom . . . [he Is] The Man For This Time.
Men
Imagination
Creative
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.
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Mothers Day
Pregnancy
Deep, Deep Trouble. Can't Rival The Dead For Love. Lose Every Time.
Rivals
Trouble
Loses
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.
Past
Years
Laughing
You Your Own Best Thing, Sethe. You Are.
Self Esteem
Esteem
Best Things
As You Enter Positions Of Trust And Power, Dream A Little Before You Think.
Inspirational
Dream
Thinking
I Dream A Dream That Dreams Back At Me.
Dream
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
It Seems To Me Everything Shakespeare Did Was Political.
Political
Seems
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
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
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
Brother
Children
Gun
The Best Art Is Political And You Ought To Be Able To Make It Unquestionably Political And Irrevocably Beautiful At The Same Time.
Beautiful
Art
Political
Everything I've Ever Done, In The Writing World, Has Been To Expand Articulation, Rather Than To Close It.
Writing
Done
World
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.
Beautiful
Dream
Pain
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
Writing
Black
Certain Seeds It Will Not Nurture, Certain Fruit It Will Not Bear And When The Land Kills Of Its Own Volition, We Acquiesce And Say The Victim Had No Right To Live
Land
Fruit
Bears
There Is Really Nothing More To Say - Except Why. But Since Why Is Difficult To Handle, One Must Take Refuge In How.
Beloved
Difficult
Refuge
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
Two
The Function Of Freedom Is To Free Someone Else.
Love
Responsibility
Revolutionary
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
Being Good To Somebody Is Just Like Being Mean To Somebody. Risky. You Don't Get Nothing For It.
Mean
Being Me
Being Mean
But Maybe A Man Was Nothing But A Man, Which Is What Baby Suggs Always Said. They Encouraged You To Put Some Of Your Weight In Their Hands And Soon As You Felt How Light And Lovely That Was, They Studied Your Scars And Tribulations, After Which They Did What He Had Done: Ran Her Children Out And Tore Up The House. [...] A Man Ain't Nothing But A Man,' Said Baby Suggs. 'but A Son? Well Now, That's Somebody.
Love
Baby
Children
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
People
Wish
Ems
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?
Gratitude
Hurt
Beer
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
At Some Point In Life, The World's Beauty Becomes Enough.
Beauty
Nature
World
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
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
Much Handled Things Are Always Soft(27).
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 We Had No Language We'd Have Nothing.
Language
Ifs
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
You Got Two Feet, Sethe, Not Four." He Said, And Right Then A Forest Sprang Up Between Them; Tactless And Quiet.
Two
Feet
Four
What Difference Do It Make If The Thing You Scared Of Is Real Or Not?
Fear
Real
Differences
If I’d A Knowed More, I Would A Loved More.
Ifs
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
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
I Didn't Fall In Love, I Rose In It.
Falling In Love
Fall
Rose
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
Everything Depends On Knowing How Much,” She Said, And “good Is Knowing When To Stop.
Knowing
Said
Depends
...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.
Boys
Bird
Four
Intimacy Is Extremely Important To Me And I Want It To Be Extremely Important To The Readers.
Important
Want
Intimacy
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
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
My Children Are Delightful People, Whom I Would Love Even If They Weren't My Children.
Children
People
Delightful
We Mistook Violence For Passion, Indolence For Leisure, And Thought Recklessness Was Freedom.
Passion
Leisure
Violence
You Been Gone Too Long, Sula. Not Too Long, But Maybe Too Far.
Long
Gone
A Man Ain't Nothing But A Man. But A Son? Well, Now, That's Somebody.
Son
Men
Wells
Freedom Is Choosing Your Responsibility. It's Not Having No Responsibilitie S; It's Choosing The Ones You Want.
Responsibility
Want
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
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 Is No Civilization That Did Not Begin With Art, Whether It Was Drawing A Line In The Sand, Painting A Cave Or Dancing.
Art
Civilization
Drawing
The Presence Of Evil Was Something To Be First Recognized, Then Dealt With, Survived, Outwitted, Triumphed Over.
Evil
Firsts
Survived
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
Black Women Are The Touchstone By Which All That Is Human Can Be Measured.
Black
Black Women
Humans
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
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
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
...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
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
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.
Zero
Taken
Writing
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.
Girl
Struggle
Boys
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.
Couple
Writing
Thinking
If You Surrendered To The Air, You Could Ride It.
Air
Milkman
Ifs
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.
Mother
Children
Father
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.
Art
Journey
Cost
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
If He Looked Into Her Face, He Would See Those Haunted, Loving Eyes. The Hauntedness Would Irritate Him - The Love Would Move Him To Fury. How Dare She Love Him? Hadn't She Any Sense At All? What Was He Supposed To Do About That? Return It? How? What Could His Calloused Hands Produce To Make Her Smile? What Of His Knowledge Of The World And Of Life Could Be Useful To Her? What Could His Heavy Arms And Befuddled Brain Accomplish That Would Earn Him His Own Respect, That Would In Turn Allow Him To Accept Her Love?
Moving
Eye
Loving Life
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.
Strong
Thinking
World
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