you got two feet, Sethe, not four." he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; tactless and quiet.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.

Of course I'm a black writer... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?

Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.