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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.

-Toni Morrison

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Some Things You Forget.

Toni Morrison

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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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart. When My Kids Walk In The Room My Face Says I'm Glad To See Them.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Which Was What Love Was: Unmotivated Respect.

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.

Lonely Was Much Better Than Alone.

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.

Now He Knew Why He Loved Her So. Without Ever Leaving The Ground, She Could Fly. 'there Must Be Another One Like You,' He Whispered To Her. 'there's Got To Be At Least One More Woman Like You.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everybody Gets Everything Handed To Them. The Rich Inherit It. I Don't Mean Just Inheritance Of Money. I Mean What People Take For Granted Among The Middle And Upper Classes, Which Is Nepotism, The Old-boy Network.

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

Falling In Love

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Falling In Love

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

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

African American

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

No Gasp At A Miracle That Is Truly Miraculous Because The Magic Lies In The Fact That You Knew It Was There For You All Along.

Some Native American Writers Enjoy Being Called Native American Writers.

Native American

As A Writer Reading, I Came To Realize The Obvious: The Subject Of The Dream Is The Dreamer.

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.

Not Knowing It Was Hard; Knowing It Was Harder

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

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.

The Past Is Interesting To Me Because It's Been Dumbed Down Or Flattened Out, Or Academically Nitpicked So You Can't Get Any Life Out Of It, You Just Get Data.

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

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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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Love Is Never Any Better Than The Lover.

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.

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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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

Don't Ever Think I Fell For You, Or Fell Over You. I Didn't Fall In Love, I Rose In It.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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. For Loneliness Assumed The Absence Of Other People, And The Solitude She Found In That Desperate Terrain Had Never Admitted The Possibility Of Other People. She Wept Then. Tears For The Deaths Of The Littlest Things: The Castaway Shoes Of Children; Broken Stems Of Marsh Grass Battered And Drowned By The Sea; Prom Photographs Of Dead Women She Never Knew; Wedding Rings In Pawnshop Windows; The Tiny Bodies Of Cornish Hens In A Nest Of Rice.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Books Are A Form Of Political Action. Books Are Knowledge. Books Are Reflection. Books Change Your Mind.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 ."

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

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.

Literature, It Seems To Me, Is Wisdom.

Black Boys Became Criminalized. I Was In Constant Dread For Their Lives, Because They Were Targets Everywhere. They Still Are.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Was My Father Who Could Do No Wrong. So I Didn't Think Of It As, Oh, Look, My Father's A Violent Man.

...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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

This Is The Time For Every Artist In Every Genre To Do What He Or She Does Loudly And Consistently. It Doesn't Matter To Me What Your Position Is. You've Got To Keep Asserting The Complexity And The Originality Of Life, And The Multiplicity Of It, And The Facets Of It. This Is About Being A Complex Human Being In The World, Not About Finding A Villain. This Is No Time For Anything Else Than The Best That You've Got.

I 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.

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.

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

I Merged Those Two Words, Black And Feminist, Because I Was Surrounded By Black Women Who Were Very Tough And And Who Always Assumed They Had To Work And Rear Children And Manage Homes.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

He Wants To Put His Story Next To Hers.

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

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.

Liberation Means You Don't Have To Be Silenced.

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.

Something That Is Loved Is Never Lost.

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

Don't Tell Us What To Believe, What To Fear. Show Us Belief's Wide Skirt And The Stitch That Unravels Fear's Caul.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Definitions Belong To The Definer, Not The Defined.

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

Bearing Witness

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

You Looked At Me Then Like You Knew Me, And I Thought It Really Was Eden, And I Couldn't Take Your Eyes In Because I Was Loving The Hoof Marks On Your Cheeks.

Love At First Sight

Passion Is Never Enough; Neither Is Skill.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Intimacy Is Extremely Important To Me And I Want It To Be Extremely Important To The Readers.

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

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?

It Seems To Me Everything Shakespeare Did Was Political.

She Learned The Intricacy Of Loneliness: The Horror Of Color, The Roar Of Soundlessness And The Menace Of Familiar Objects Lying Still.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Wanted To Separate Color From Race. Distinguishing Color - Light, Black, In-between - As The Marker For Race Is Really An Error.

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.

Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.

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

All She Saw, Down In The Cellar Well Beneath The Stoop, Was A Light Yellow Feather With A Tip Of Green. And She Had Never Named Him. Had Called Him "my Parrot" All These Years. "my Parrot." "love You. "love You." Did The Dogs Get Him? Or Did He Get The Message - That She Said, "my Parrot" And He Said, "love You," And She Had Never Said It Back Or Even Taken The Trouble To Name Him - And Manage Somehow To Fly Away On Wings That Had Not Soared For Six Years.

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

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.

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