He wants to put his story next to hers.

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

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

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises.... If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest, not what pays

Something that is loved is never lost.

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.