Quotes from Gloria Naylor

God had given her what she prayed for—a little boy who would always need her.

Etta and Mattie went way back, a singular term that claimed co-knowledge of all the important events in their lives and almost all of the unimportant ones.

So Lorraine found herself, on her knees, surrounded by the most dangerous species in existence—human males with an erection to validate in a world that was only six feet wide.

And Ciel lay down and cried. But Mattie knew the tears would end. And she would sleep. And morning would come.

But she noticed that some of the people who had spoken to her before made a point of having something else to do with their eyes when she passed, although she could almost feel them staring at her back as she moved on.

The alien pounding and the heat and the dark glistening bodies dragged her back, back past the cold ashes of her innocence to a time when pain could be castrated on the sharp edges of iron-studded faith.

They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Brewster Place.

All the beautiful plants that once had an entire sun porch for themselves in the home she had exchanged thirty years of her life to pay for would now have to fight for light on a crowded windowsill.

That Butch Fuller is a no-'count ditch hound, and no decent woman would be seen talkin' to him. But Butch had a laugh like the edges of an April sunset—translucent and mystifying. You knew it couldn't last forever, but you'd stand for hours, hoping for the chance to experience just a glimmer of it once again.

Everything about Butch was like puffed air and cotton candy, but it thrilled her anyway whenever he straightened up to call to her through the tall grass.

Whatever was lacking within him that made it impossible to confront the difficulties of life could not be supplied with words. She saw it now. There was a void in his being that had been padded and cushioned over the years, and now that covering had grown impregnable. She bit on her bottom lip and swallowed back a sob. God had given her what she prayed for—a little boy who would always need her.

Where could she be going with all them kids? The welfare office wasn't open. She was greeted with the friendly caution that women hold toward unmarried women who repeatedly have children—since they aren't having them by their own husbands, there is always the possibility they are having them by yours.

An entire week of drawn shades was evidence enough to send her flying around with reports that as soon as it got dark they pulled their shades down and put on the lights. Heads nodded in knowing unison—a definite sign. If doubt was voiced with a "But I pull my shades down at night too," a whispered "Yeah, but you're not that way" was argument enough to win them over.

If she had seen Ben, nothing would have made her believe that practically every apartment contained a family, a Bible, and a dream that one day enough could be scraped from those meager Friday night paychecks to make Brewster Place a distant memory.

But she didn't want to stay there, so she climbed back out the window, through the glass eyes of the seven-foot Good Shepherd, and started again the futile weaving of invisible ifs and slippery mights into an equally unattainable past.

The pressure on her arm brought Etta back onto the uncomfortable wooden pew. But she didn't want to stay there, so she climbed back out the window, through the glass eyes of the seven-foot Good Shepherd, and started again the futile weaving of invisible ifs and slippery mights into an equally unattainable past.

You're a crafty old woman. You always try to win an argument by talkin' about some funeral. You're too ornery to die, and you know it.

She studied the fine lines and loops, commas and periods that had come between them, and they etched themselves into her mind.

These young men always moved in a pack, or never without two or three. They needed the others continually near to verify their existence.

Lie to everyone in this man's world if need be, but never lie to yourself, because that's the quickest road to destruction.

In short, his entire life became a race against the natural—and he was winning.

They didn't understand the importance of a family, of life. All of those sacrifices to build them houses and they refused to build a history.

In Linden Hills they could forget that the world said you spelled black with a capital nothing. Well, they were something and there was everything around them to show it. The world hadn't given them anything but the chance to fail -- and they hadn't failed, because they were in Linden Hills. They had a thousand years and a day to sit right there and forget what it meant to be black, because it meant working yourself to death just to stand still.

Small places live on small talk, but sometimes the happenings can be too lean for everybody to get enough fat out of it to chew over.