Quotes About Strength

Black women were armed; black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.

There was nobody but me to take care of me so I invented myself, toughened myself.

Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.

He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?

There is a loneliness that can be rocked. 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.

I've had only two regular women. I liked the small breakable thing inside each one. Whatever their personality, smarts, or looks, something soft lay inside each. Like a bird's breastbone, shaped and chosen to wish on. A little V, thinner than bone and lightly hinged, that I could break with a forefinger if I wanted to, but never did. Want to, I mean. Knowing it was there, hiding from me, was enough.

You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?

I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my children could get in between

Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.

Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake—otherwise it just walks on in your door.

Two months surrounded by country women who loved mean had changed her. The women handled sickness as though it were an affront, an illegal, invading braggart who needed whipping. They didn't waste their time or the patient's with sympathy and they met the tears of the suffering with resigned contempt.

Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and shield. Don't study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield.

They had become an occasional mutter, like the interior sounds a woman makes when she believes she is alone and unobserved at her work: a sth when she misses the needle's eye; a soft moan when she sees another chip in her one good platter; the low friendly argument with which she greets the hens.

You are your best thing.

Finally Milkman could take no more; he had to rest. At the next tree he sank down to the ground and put his head back on its bark. Let them laugh if they wanted to; he would not move until his heart left from under his chin and went back down into his chest where it belonged.

Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up. Still. . . if her boys were gone . . .

Men wear you down to a sharp piece of gristle if you let them.

Bodacious black Eves unredeemed by Mary, they are like panicked does leaping toward a sun that has finished burning off the mist and now pours its holy oil over the hides of game. God at their side, the men take aim. For Ruby.

lay it all down, sword and shield.

He wanted her in that room with him giving him the balance he was losing, the ballast and counterweight to the stone of sorrow New York City had given him.

Being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn't limit my imagination; it expands it," Toni Morrison, who turns eighty-eight today

And if you have the emotional strength and/or support from family and friends, the damage is reduced or erased. We think of it as the stress (minor or disabling) that is part of life as a human.