For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.

He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers. ‘Me? Me?

Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

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

Shallow believers prefer a shallow God.

Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him ... His subconscious knew what his min did not guess-that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke.