When you first start writing-and I think it's true for a lot of beginning writers-you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it-and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better.

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

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.

I have difficulties with contemporary language. Big difficulties. I counted, you know, something like 160 words have disappeared from the English language because of the use of the word "like." "I'm like, he's like" - not "thought," not "as if ."

And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

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.

When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.