We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races.

Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.

The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.