Quotes from Gloria Naylor

Now that she had actually seen and accepted reality, and reality brought such a healing calm.

3)"One man's weed is another man's flower." (115).

2)"Even though this planet is round, there are just too many spots where you can find yourself hanging on to the edge just like I was; and unless there's some space, some place, to take a breather for awhile, the edge of the world- frightening as it is- could be the end of the world, which would be quite a pity." (28).

1) "school isn't where the real learning happens." (3).

You can lose a lot when you travel too much.

There are no absolute truths, and the best historians know that. You strive to capture a moment of time, and if your work is done properly, history becomes a written photograph.

We all don't have to see eye to eye in order to see our way to the Kingdom. It's the heart condition of each man that the Lord will judge.

Like they say, it takes all types to make the world. But sometimes you wish it didn't.

When you raise a god instead of a child, you're bound to be serving him for the rest of your days. Same thing holds when you marry a god.

Contempt mates well with pity.

He holds his glass up and turns to me as a single flake catches on the rim before melting down the one side into an amber world where bubbles burst and are born, burst and are born.

There is nothing in back of this cafe. Since the place sits right on the margin between the edge of the world and infinite possibility, he back door opens out to a void. It takes courage to turn the knob and heart to leave the steps.

True insanity, as frightening as it might be, gives a sort of obliviousness to the chaos in a life. People who commit suicide are struggling to order their existence, and when they see it's a losing battle, they will finalize it rather than have it wrenched from them. Insanity wouldn't permit that type of clarity.

Ain't nothing to be shamed of. Having a baby is the most natural thing there is. The Good Book call children a gift from the Lord. And there ain't no place in that Bible of His that say babies is sinful. The sin is the fornicatin', and that's over and done with. God done forgave you of that a long time ago, and what's going on in your belly now ain't nothin' to hang your head about--you remember that.

You don't repay kindness with needless cruelty.

We get so caught up in what a man isn't. It's what he is that counts.

One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work.

That's one of the privileges of old age - you can give plenty of advice 'cause most folks think that's all you got left anyway.

There's something hypocritical about a city that keeps half of its population underground half of the time; you can start believing that there's much more space than there really is-to live, to work.

Self-consciousness is really a form of egotism.

I realize at one point, that I was being followed, and then I began to see the surveillance that was going past the road on my house. And so, these cars began to surveil me. People began to follow me around, and it did, it was very disrupting to think that your privacy was being violated, and for no reason that I could come up with.

We cannot tell the exact moment a friendship is formed; as in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses, there is at last one that makes the heart run over.

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

Old as he was, he still missed his daddy sometimes.