Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers. ‘Me? Me?

You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.

You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.

Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.