Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never.

Intimacy is extremely important to me and I want it to be extremely important to the readers.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.

I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.

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.

Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.