Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.

Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

When I write, I don't translate for white readers.... Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If I'm specific, and I don't overexplain, then anyone can overhear me.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.