77 quotes
Nothing like other folks' sin for distraction.
Paradise (1997)
Anything dead coming back to life hurts.
Beloved (1987)
Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.
Paradise (1997)
Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers — not the defined.
Beloved (1987)
What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?
Song of Solomon (1977)
None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
A Humanist View (1975)
Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.
Sula (1973)
If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
Song of Solomon (1977)
To avoid the prison of reacting to racism is a problem of the very first order. Where the mind dwells on changing the minds of racists is a very dank place.
A Humanist View (1975)
Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty.
The Bluest Eye (1969)
We are the moral inhabitants of the globe. And to deny it is to lie in prison.
A Humanist View (1975)
A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring.
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Born lost. Take over the world and still lost.
Paradise (1997)
124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom.
Beloved (1987)
Language can never "pin down" slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Know 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.
A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.
Beloved (1987)
Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)