Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence.

You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

New York is the last true city.

I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now. Novels are always inquiries for me.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.