All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too.

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

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

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.

Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.

It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

I am a moralist. I worry.