If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.
There is no graceful way to carry hatred.
How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, and hopefully embraced upon arrival, impacts the whole of our time on earth.
Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.
You must learn to love only that which cannot be stolen.
The most important question in the world is, ‘Why is the child crying?’
I don’t know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don’t see it as a handing down of answers...
The nature of this flower is to bloom.
Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.
I’ve found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.
It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.
I had assumed that the Earth, the spirit of the Earth, noticed exceptions-those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the Earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.
I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same, there’s a real lightheartednes s about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they’re not the same, ever again.
Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.
I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.
It is natural to want to have a future.
We will be ourselves and free, or die in the attempt. Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing.
Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.
For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.
It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.