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

-Toni Morrison

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Sometimes Joyce Is Hilarious.

Toni Morrison

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

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Love Is Divine Only And Difficult Always.

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

In Order To Be As Free As I Possibly Can, In My Own Imagination, I Can't Take Positions That Are Closed. Everything I've Ever Done, In The Writing World, Has Been To Expand Articulation, Rather Than To Close It, To Open Doors, Sometimes, Not Even Closing The Book -- Leaving The Endings Open For Reinterpretation, Revisitation, A Little Ambiguity.

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Being Able To Laugh Got Me Through.

Laughter Is More Serious Than Tears.

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Bearing Witness

She Had Been Looking All Along For A Friend, And It Took Her A While To Discover That A Lover Was Not A Comrade And Could Never Be - For A Woman. And That No One Would Ever Be That Version Of Herself Which She Sought To Reach Out To And Touch With An Ungloved Hand. There Was Only Her Own Mood And Whim, And If That Was All There Was, She Decided To Turn The Naked Hand Toward It, Discover It And Let Others Become As Intimate With Their Own Selves As She Was.

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Definitions Belong To The Definers, Not The Defined.

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Falling In Love

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Don’t Beg Anybody For Anything, Especially Love.

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

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

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

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.

The Hopelessness That Comes From Knowing Too Little And Feeling Too Much (so Brittle, So Dry He Is In Danger Of The Reverse: Feeling Nothing And Knowing Everything)

Knowing Everything

Black People Have Always Been Used As A Buffer In This Country Between Powers To Prevent Class War.

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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Too Much Information

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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.

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.

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

Definitions Belong To The Definer, Not The Defined.

I Couldn't Bear To Have People Mispronounce My Name. But The Person I Was Was This Person Who Was Called Chloe.

Schools Must Stop Being Holding Pens To Keep Energetic Young People Off The Job Market And Off The Streets. We Stretch Puberty Out A Long, Long Time.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Always Start Out With An Idea, Even A Boring Idea, That Becomes A Question I Don't Have Answers To.

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

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

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

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.

Hospitality Is Gold In This City; You Have To Be Clever To Figure Out How To Be Welcoming And Defensive At The Same Time. When To Love Something And When To Quit. If You Don't Know How, You Can End Up Out Of Control Or Controlled By Some Outside Thing Like That Hard Case Last Winter.

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.

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?

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

You Your Own Best Thing, Sethe. You Are.

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

This Word "love" - Discredited, "clicheed" - Can Be Restored And Love, The Instinct, The Impulse To Care For Somebody In The Hope That Somebody Will Care For You - Plus Our Language, The Language, A Language - Is About All We Have. With Everything Else Going On, This Is What Makes Us, What Keeps Us Human.

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.

Political Doesn't Necessarily Mean You Have An Agenda.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Here I Am Not The One To Throw Out. No One Steals My Warmth And Shoes Because I Am Small. No One Handles My Backside. No One Whinnies Like Sheep Or Goat Because I Drop In Fear And Weakness. No One Screams At The Sight Of Me. No One Watches My Body For How It Is Unseemly. With You My Body Is Pleasure Is Safe Is Belonging. I Can Never Not Have You Have Me.

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

To Be Given Dominion Over Another Is A Hard Thing; To Wrest Dominion Over Another Is A Wrong Thing; To Give Dominion Of Yourself To Another Is A Wicked Thing.

Adults, Older Girls, Shops, Magazines, Newspapers, Window Signsall The World Had Agreed That A Blue-eyed, Yellow-haired, Pink-skinned Doll Was What Every Girl Child Treasured

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Want To Feel What I Feel. What's Mine. Even If It's Not Happiness, Whatever That Means. Because You're All You've Got.

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.

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.

I Remember A Very Important Lesson That My Father Gave Me When I Was Twelve Or Thirteen. He Said, "you Know, Today I Welded A Perfect Seam And I Signed My Name To It." And I Said, "but, Daddy, No One's Going To See It!" And He Said, "yeah, But I Know It's There." So When I Was Working In Kitchens, I Did Good Work.

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

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

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

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.

All Paradises, All Utopias Are Designed By Who Is Not There, By The People Who Are Not Allowed In.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

A Dream Is Just A Nightmare With Lipstick.

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

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.

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

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.

Passion Is Never Enough; Neither Is Skill.

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

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

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.

Let Your Face Speak What's In Your Heart.

My Metaphor Is That Evil Always Has A Top Hat And A Cape, And Goodness Is Over There In The Corner. For Me It's Just Too Easy, If You Hate Your Country Or Your Wife, So You Kill Them. You Can't Think Through That, You Can't Feel Through That, You Can't Do The Work. And Now We Have Guns. Solution? I Don't Think So.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

What Do You Say? There Really Are No Words For That. There Really Aren't. Somebody Tries To Say, 'i'm Sorry, I'm So Sorry.' People Say That To Me. There's No Language For It. Sorry Doesn't Do It. I Think You Should Just Hug People And Mop Their Floor Or Something.

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.

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.

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.

A Bestseller Is A Book That Non-book Buyers Buy

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

I Tell My Students, 'when You Get These Jobs That You Have Been So Brilliantly Trained For, Just Remember That Your Real Job Is That If You Are Free, You Need To Free Somebody Else. If You Have Some Power, Then Your Job Is To Empower Somebody Else. This Is Not Just A Grab-bag Candy Game.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Make A Difference About Something Other Than Yourselves.

Liberation Means You Don't Have To Be Silenced.

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