A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.

Well, feel this, why don't you? Feel how it feels to have a bed to sleep in and somebody there not worrying you to death about what you got to do each day to deserve it. Feel how that feels. And if that don't get it, feel how it feels to be a colored woman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you. Feel that.

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

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