Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?

We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

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 tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now.

Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.' Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part.