Quotes from Toni Morrison

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

Thank God for life, True Belle said, and thank life for death.

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

Didn't everything on God's earth have or acquire defense?

The desire, let alone the gesture, to meet her needs was good enough to lift her spirits to the place where she could take the next step: ask for some clarifying word; some advice about how to keep on with a brain greedy for news nobody could live with in a world happy to provide it.

Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass. Neither one had spoken a word.

God take what He would, she said. And He did, and He did, and He did.

No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free. DENVER'S SECRETS were sweet.

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.

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.

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