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Sometimes The Names Were Humiliating, Deliberately So. Somebody Would Pick Out Your Flaw. If You Were Little, They Would Call You Shorty. And If You Were Angry, They Would Call You The Devil.

-Toni Morrison

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Sometimes The Names Were

Toni Morrison

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Sometimes The Names Were Humiliating, Deliberately So. Somebody Would Pick Out Your Flaw. If You Were Little, They Would Call You Shorty. And If You Were Angry, They Would Call You The Devil.

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

The Function Of Freedom Is To Free Someone Else.

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.

Definitions Belong To The Definer, Not The Defined.

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.

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.

Unless Carefree, Mother Love Was A Killer.

Sifting Daylight Dissolves The Memory, Turns It Into Dust Motes Floating In Light.

Somebody Has To Take Responsibility For Being A Leader.

Taking Responsibility

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.

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

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

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

What I'm Doing Ain't About Hating White People. It's About Loving Us.

Anything Dead Coming Back To Life Hurts.

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.

All The Time, I'm Afraid The Thing That Happened That Made It All Right For My Mother To Kill My Sister Could Happen Again. I Don't Know What It Is, I Don't Know Who It Is, But Maybe There Is Something Else Terrible Enough To Make Her Do It Again. I Need To Know What That Thing Might Be, But I Don't Want To. Whatever It Is, It Comes From Outside This House, Outside The Yard, And It Can Come Right On In The Yard If It Wants To. So I Never Leave This House And I Watch Over The Yard, So It Can't Happen Again And My Mother Won't Have To Kill Me Too.

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

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

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.

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.

It's Important, Therefore, To Know Who The Real Enemy Is, And To Know The Function, The Very Serious Function Of Racism, Which Is Distraction. It Keeps You From Doing Your Work. It Keeps You Explaining Over And Over Again, Your Reason For Being. Somebody Says You Have No Language And So You Spend 20 Years Proving That You Do. Somebody Says Your Head Isn't Shaped Properly So You Have Scientists Working On The Fact That It Is. Someone Says You Have No Art So You Dredge That Up. Somebody Says You Have No Kingdoms And So You Dredge That Up. None Of That Is Necessary. There Will Always Be One More Thing.

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.

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

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

Love Is Never Any Better Than The Lover.

My First-born. All I Can Remember Of Her Is How She Loved The Burned Bottom Of Bread. Can You Beat That? Eight Children And That's All I Remember.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

...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)

The Pieces I Am, She Gather Them And Gave Them Back To Me In All The Right Order.

I Feel Like Today We Always Glorify The Young, Just-plucked-from-college Writer. But It's Much Harder To Start Writing Later, In Middle Age, Struggling On A Book Around A Full-time Job And Family.

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.

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

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.

It Seems To Me Everything Shakespeare Did Was Political.

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

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

Every Now And Then She Looked Around For Tangible Evidence Of His Having Ever Been There. Where Were The Butterflies? The Blueberries? The Whistling Reed? She Could Find Nothing, For He Had Left Nothing But His Stunning Absence.

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.

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

I Sang "o Holy Night" In A School Choir. My Mother Came And Listened To Me And Complimented Me. So That Was The High Point. I Cannot Sing A Note.

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?

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

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.

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?

He Said, 'always. Always.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Some Native American Writers Enjoy Being Called Native American Writers.

Native American

They Had Stared At Her With Great Uncomprehending Eyes. Eyes That Questioned Nothing And Asked Everything. Unblinking And Unabashed, They Stared Up At Her. The End Of The World Lay In Their Eyes, And The Beginning, And All The Waste In Bewteen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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

Anger... It's A Paralyzing Emotion... You Can't Get Anything Done.

Liberation Means You Don't Have To Be Silenced.

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.

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.

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

When You First Start Writing-and I Think It's True For A Lot Of Beginning Writers-you're Scared To Death That If You Don't Get That Sentence Right That Minute It's Never Going To Show Up Again. And It Isn't. But It Doesn't Matter-another One Will, And It'll Probably Be Better. And I Don't Mind Writing Badly For A Couple Of Days Because I Know I Can Fix It-and Fix It Again And Again And Again, And It Will Be Better.

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.

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

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

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.

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

There Is A Loneliness That Can Be Rocked. Arms Crossed, Knees Drawn Up, Holding, Holding On, This Motion, Unlike A Ship's, Smooths And Contains The Rocker. It's An Inside Kind--wrapped Tight Like Skin. Then There Is The Loneliness That Roams. No Rocking Can Hold It Down. It Is Alive. On Its Own. A Dry And Spreading Thing That Makes The Sound Of One's Own Feet Going Seem To Come From A Far-off Place.

I Like Marriage. The Idea.

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

Bearing Witness

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.

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

I Began To Realize That This Idea Of The Lighter The Better And The Darker The Worse Was Really - Had An Impact On Sororities, On Friendships, On All Sorts Of Things, And It Was Stunning To Me.

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.

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

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

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

Meaning Of Life

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.

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

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.

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.

A Bestseller Is A Book That Non-book Buyers Buy

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?

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Am In The Position Of Judging People By The Best They've Ever Done Rather Than The Worst.

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

Please Don't Settle For Happiness. It's Not Good Enough. Of Course You Deserve It, But If That's All You Have In Mind - Happiness - I Want To Suggest To You That Personal Success Devoid Of Meaningfulness, Free Of A Steady Commitment To Social Justice - That's More Than A Barren Life. It's A Trivial One.

Not Good Enough

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.

They Seemed To Have Taken All Of Their Smoothly Cultivated Ignorance, Their Exquisitely Learned Self-hatred, Their Elaborately Designed Hopelessness And Sucked It All Up Into A Fiery Cone Of Scorn That Had Burned For Ages In The Hollows Of Their Minds― Cooled ―and Spilled Over Lips Of Outrage, Consuming Whatever Was In Its Path.

I 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.

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

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

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

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

Lonely Was Much Better Than Alone.

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

Birth, Life, And Death― Each Took Place On The Hidden Side Of A Leaf.

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

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.

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

I Really Want Some Meaning. It Used To Be Easy To Toss It Off. Now It's Harder And Harder. You Have To Navigate Just To Find Something That Has Nourishment. It's The Absence Of Nourishment. What Do You Do In Place Of Nourishment? It's Usually Junk. Either It's Junk Food Or Junk Clothes Or Junk Ideas.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

It Was A Fine Cry - Loud And Long - But It Had No Bottom And It Had No Top, Just Circles And Circles Of Sorrow.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

You Can't Own A Human Being. You Can't Lose What You Don't Own. Suppose You Did Own Him. Could You Really Love Somebody Who Was Absolutely Nobody Without You? You Really Want Somebody Like That? Somebody Who Falls Apart When You Walk Out The Door? You Don't, Do You? And Neither Does He. You're Turning Over Your Whole Life To Him. Your Whole Life, Girl. And If It Means So Little To You That You Can Just Give It Away, Hand It To Him, Then Why Should It Mean Any More To Him? He Can't Value You More Than You Value Yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Children - I Call Them Children When They're Under 18 - Are Hungry For That Love. The Drugs Are Just A Sleep That You Can't Even Wake Up From, Because You Might Remember What You Did When You Were There. There's No Place For Them - There Should Be A Rehabilitation Center On Every Corner, Along With Mcdonald's And The Banks. This Is Serious Business. The Waiting Lists Are Incredible. I Mean, It's Terrible. It's Really Terrible.

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

Falling In Love

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

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.

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 Get Angry About Things, Then Go On And Work.

For Lo, The Winter Is Past, The Rain Is Over And Gone; The Flowers Appear On The Earth; The Time Of The Singing Of Birds Is Come, And The Voice Of The Turtledove Is Heard In Our Land.

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.

My World Did Not Shrink Because I Was A Black Female Writer. It Just Got Bigger.

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.

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

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

All Art Is Knowing When To Stop.

I Thought The Whole World Was Like Lorain.

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

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.

I Dream A Dream That Dreams Back At Me.

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

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

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?

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.

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

The Body Is Ready To Have Babies. Nature Wants It Done Then, When The Body Can Handle It, Not After 40, When The Income Can Handle It.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I Am A Moralist. I Worry.

We Never Shape The World . . . The World Shapes Us.

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.

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

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.

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 ."

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.

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.

You Your Own Best Thing, Sethe. You Are.

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.

Word-work Is Sublime... Because It Is Generative; It Makes Meaning That Secures Our Difference, Our Human Difference-the Way In Which We Are Like No Other Life. We Die. That May Be The Meaning Of Life. But We Do Language. That May Be The Measure Of Our Lives.

Meaning Of Life

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.

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

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.

Love Just Seems To Make Life Not Just Livable, But A Gallant, Gallant Event.

Anger ... It's A Paralyzing Emotion ... You Can't Get Anything Done. People Sort Of Think It's An Interesting, Passionate, And Igniting Feeling — I Don't Think It's Any Of That — It's Helpless ... It's Absence Of Control — And I Need All Of My Skills, All Of The Control, All Of My Powers ... And Anger Doesn't Provide Any Of That — I Have No Use For It Whatsoever." [interview With Cbs Radio Host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]

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

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

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.

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.

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.

...a Habit That Had Become One Of Those Necessary Things For The Night... Surely A Body-friendly If Not Familiar-lying Next To You. Someone Whose Touch Is A Reassurance, Not An Affront Or A Nuissance. Whose Heavy Breathing Neither Enrages Nor Discusts You, But Amuses You Like That Of A Cherished Pet.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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