Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.
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.
I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be ask...
Not know it was hard
Black women were armed, black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.
It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "anything dead coming back to life hurts.
I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' 'The way I want it?' 'Yeah. The way you want...
When I first seed Cholly, I want you to know it was like all the bits of color from that time down home when all us chil'ren went berry picking after a funeral and I put some in the pocket of my Sunda...
Write at the edges of the day.
Maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don't believe it and don't count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as dangerous.
Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.
Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was [...] School teacher changed me. I was something else and that something else was less than a chicken sitt...
Nobody gave you to me. Nobody said that’s the one for you. I picked you out. Wrong time, yep, and doing wrong by my wife. But the picking out, the choosing. Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell ov...