Sula

by Toni Morrison

“I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.”

“all they want, man, is they own misery. Ax em to die for you and they yours for life.”

Their children were like distant but exposed wounds whose aches were no less intimate because separate from their flesh.

“Yes. But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.”