It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.

Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.

Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s; it's choosing the ones you want.

You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.

Anything dead coming back to life hurts.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.