"In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it."

"Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty....A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles."

"I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man."

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough."

"In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color."

"Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be."

"It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years."

"Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon."

"No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along."

"If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away."

"You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."

"For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction."

"Lonely was much better than alone."

"In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art from, she became dangerous."

"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."

"If she answered, he could not hear it, and he certainly couldn't see her, so he went. First he crawled the rocks one by one, one by one, till his hands touched shore and the nursing sound of the sea was behind him. He felt around, crawled off and then stood up. Breathing heavily with his mouth open he took a few tentative steps. The pebbles made him stumble and so did the roots of trees. He threw out his hands to guide and steady his going. By and by he walked steadier, now steadier. The mist lifted and the trees stepped back a bit as if to make the way easier for a certain kind of man. Then he ran. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Looking neither to the left nor to the right. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Lickety-lickety-lickety-split."

"The function of freedom is to free someone else."

"God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing."

"Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise."

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

"I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway."

"He didn't needs words or even want them because he knew how they could lie, could heat your blood and disappear."

"Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers."

"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it."

"She knew Paul D was adding something to her life-something she wanted to count on but was scared to... His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearable because it was his as well-to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other-the things neither had word-shapes for-well, it would come in time."

"I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger."

"Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I'll tell you where. From that little hog's gut that hangs between your legs. Well, let me tell you something... you will need more than that. I don't know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that.... You are a sad, pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man. I hope your little hog's gut stands you in good stead, and you take good care of it, because you don't have anything else."

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

"The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing.It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects."

"She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?"

"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?"

"When I write, I don't translate for white readers.... Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If I'm specific, and I don't overexplain, then anyone can overhear me."

"They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp."

"What's fair ain't necessarily right."

"The human body is robust. It can gather strength when it's in mortal danger."

"A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people."

"The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing."

"Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader."

"Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion."

"I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons."

"Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's."

"Guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness."

"We tend to overlook goodness, but we must put goodness front and center in our lives."

"This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got."

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

"Beauty was not simply something to behold, it was something one could do."