I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.

This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.

Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.

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

I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.