Quotes from Toni Morrison

You your best thing.

What kind of love is it that requires an angel and only an angel for its commitment?

She floated near but outside her own body, feeling vague and intense at the same time. Needing nothing. Being what there was.

You your best thing, Sethe.

They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream.

there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople. 'They don't know when to stop,' she said, and returned to her bed, pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever.

After all that carryin' on just gettin' him out and keepin' him alive he wanted to crawl back in my womb and well...I ain't got the room no more even if he could do it. There wasn't space for him in my womb (71).

A writer's life and work are not a gift to humankind; they are its necessity.

The freezing in hell that comes before the everlasting fire where sinners bubble and singe forever.

1. What have you learned that is true (and how do you know)? 2. What problem do you have?

Beloved You are my sister You are my daughter You are my face; you are me I have found you again; you have come back to me You are my beloved

Don't nobody have to die if they don't want to. - Pilate

What he might call cowardice other people called common sense.

Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner. Women saw him and wanted to weep—to tell him that their chest hurt and their knees did too. Strong women and wise saw him and told him things they only told each other:

Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green changed. Then the vine threads came, then the buds. By the time the white petals died and the mint-colored berry poked out, the leaf shine was gilded tight and waxy.

Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took all of the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.

A twenty-year-old man so in love with his mother he gave up five years of Sabbaths just to see her sit down for a change

And when she stepped foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn't; that Halle, who had never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her.

Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you.

And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.

Well, it probably won't live. They say the way her mama beat her she lucky to be alive herself. She be lucky if it don't live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking. Can't help but be. Ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground. Well, I wouldn't worry none. It be a miracle if it live.

When good people take you in and treat you good, you ought to try to be good back.

Good is knowing when to stop.

What's fair ain't necessarily right