It's bliss when you give up all that stuff that separates you from other human beings. It's hard, but you break down all that stuff.

True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.

I thought the whole world was like Lorain.

You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.

Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.

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.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.