The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.

You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.

Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s; it's choosing the ones you want.

I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.

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

Occasionally, as children, we might figure out how to call somebody a name, and they would figure out how to call us. But it wasn't - it was so light. It was so fluffy. I didn't really have a strong awareness of segregation and the separation of races until I left Lorain, Ohio.

Love is divine only and difficult always.