Toni Morrison

"The purpose of pain is to start a journey."

"Write your own story."

"You wanna make God laugh? Tell him your plans."

"Peace is a state of mind, not the absence of pain."

"The butterfly tattoo was her concession to her youth."

"Every genius requires loneliness."

"We were so sure our love could make us skip over all that emptiness between our histories."

"Hate is exhausting and I have no time for it."

"When you get confused, listen to the music play."

"To get to a place, you have to have known where you started."

"You rely on a sentence sense, gesture sense, temper, and a sense of carelessness, almost."

"There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear."

"The good news is you don't have to do this. The bad news is you're the only one who can."

"In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass."

"Let me play out the rest of my life so that it will be, at least, if not heroic, not fearful."

"Human beings depend on and need one another."

"Anything you're interested in the world not because it is useful but because it is interesting."

"I made up my mind not to care so much about them or about what they thought."

"Every unhappy family may resemble each other, but I am more interested in what is going on."

"Bit and Bite. A tiny nothing."

"Knowledge is what's important."

"I can't make you love me if you don't."

"The struggle is everything."

"You have to believe."

"If I don't know how, I will figure it out."

"What disturbs me most is the implication that I am all that."

"You need your mama, you need your sisters, you need that village."

"I looked at things in a new way once I understood them."

"The more we understand, the less we need to fear."

"Wanting to ask is how you grow."