Quotes from Toni Morrison

How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can't stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed. Girl who you talking to? Paul D laughed. True, true. She's right, Sethe. It wasn't sweet and it sure wasn't home. He shook his head. But it's where we were, said Sethe. All together. Comes back whether we want it to or not.

Before and since, all her effort was directed not on avoiding pain but on getting through it as quickly as possible. The

The Morgans always seemed to be having a second conversation—an unheard dialogue right next to the one they spoke aloud.

I want to do good work. I want to be involved in other people's doing good work.

nothing remains but Pecola and the unyielding earth. Cholly Breedlove is dead; our innocence too. The seeds shriveled and died; her baby too. There is really nothing more to say—except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between bu the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running - from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much. Now sit down and eat with us or leave us be.

but I do not take them off, for it is too cold to lie stockingless. It takes a long time for my body to heat its place in the bed. Once I have generated a silhouette of warmth, I dare not move, for there is a cold place one-half inch in any direction.

he probably thought he was a law-abiding man, they all did, and they all always did, because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated but they could defecate over a whole people and come there to live and defecate some more by tearing up the land

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead.

And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This

It's gonna hurt now, said Amy, Anything dead coming back to life hurts.

as pale and sad as "lite" beer

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; everything, 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.

she refused to believe that she had come all that way, endured all she had, to die on the wrong side of the river.

Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was. Even if you cooked him you'd be cooking a rooster named Mister. But wasn't no way I'd ever be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub.

Nothing fierce or startling. Just that eternal, private conversation that takes place between women and their tasks.

In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart. She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound and pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they could not have it.

Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with the others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Unlike a snake or a bear, a dead nigger could not be skinned for profit and was not worth his own dead weight in coin.

Whatever's burning in me is mine

The one set of plans she had made—getting away from Sweet Home—went awry so completely she never dared life by making more.

You are my face; I am you. Why did you leave me who am you? I will never leave you again Don't ever leave me again You will never leave me again You went in the water I drank your blood I brought your milk You forgot to smile I loved you You hurt me You came back to me You left me I waited for you

You know as well as I do that people who die bad don't stay in the ground.

Algún día irás andando por el camino y oirás o verás algo. Con toda claridad. Y pensarás que eres tú la que está pensando. Una imagen pensada. Pero no. Es cuando tropiezas con un recuerdo que le pertenece a otro.