Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.

I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor.

Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability.

We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.

He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers. ‘Me? Me?