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

Evil is so seductive. It needs to grind you up and make you its slave.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.

The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.

A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.