They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.
Toni MorrisonSometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.
Toni MorrisonNo 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.
Toni MorrisonWhatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses - young loving.
Toni MorrisonWe mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
Toni MorrisonAlice thought, No. It wasn't the War and the disgruntled veterans; it wasn't the droves and droves of colored people flocking to paychecks and streets full of themselves. It was the music. The dirty, get-on-down music the women sang and the men played and both danced to, close and shamelesss or apart and wild...It made you do unwise disorderly things. Just hearing it was like violating the law.
Toni Morrison