Toni Morrison

We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious.

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.

It comforts everybody to think of all Negroes as dirt poor, and to regard those who were not, who earned good money and kept it, as some kind of shameful miracle. White people liked that idea because Negroes with money and sense made them nervous. Colored people liked it because, in those days, they trusted poverty, believed it was a virtue and a sure sign of honesty. Too much money had a whiff of evil and somebody else's blood.

She missed -- without knowing what she missed-- paints and crayons

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.

God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so.

She led him to the top of the stairs, where light came straight from the sky because the second-story windows of that house had been placed in the pitched ceiling and not the walls. There were two rooms and she took him into one of them, hoping he wouldn__ mind the fact that she was not prepared; that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked; the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else__oorknobs, straps, hooks, the sadness that crouched in corners, and the passing of time__as interference.

Rebuffed from his fine feelings, Milkman matched her cold tone. "You loved those white folks that much?""Love?" she asked. "Love?""Well, what are you taking care of their dogs for?""Do you know why she killed herself? She couldn't stand to see the place go to ruin. She couldn't live without servants and money and what it could buy. Every cent was gone and the taxes took whatever came in. She had to let the upstairs maids go, then the cook, then the dog trainer, then the yardman, then the chauffeur, then the car, then the woman who washed once a week. Then she started selling bits and pieces___and, jewels, furniture. The last few years we ate out of the garden. Finally she couldn't take it anymore. The thought of having no help, no money___ell, she couldn't take that. She had to let everything go.""But she didn't let you go." Milkman had no trouble letting his words snarl."No, she didn't let me go. She killed herself.""And you still l

He can't value you more than you value yourself.

To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The "better life" she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one.

Daily life took as much as she had. The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out.

You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.

Not like the me was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on. A secret somebody you didn't have to feel sorry for or have to fight for. -Felice

She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.

Take off that coat,' he told him.'Sir?''You heard me.'The boy slipped out of his jacket, whining, 'What you gonna do? What I'm gonna wear?'The man untied the baby from her chest and wrapped it in the boy's coat, knotting the sleeves in front.'What I'm gonna wear?'The old man sighed and, after a pause, said, 'You want it back then go head and take it off that baby. Put the baby naked in the grass and put your coat back on. And if you can do it, then go on 'way somewhere and don't come back.

You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face.

I don__ want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.___on__ we all. Look. Be what you want--- white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up__uicklike, and don__ bring me no whiteboy sass._ Hunter__ Hunter and Godlen Gray

Let me tell you something. A man ain__ a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can__ chop down because they__e inside.