Sula

by Toni Morrison

It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both.

Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s imagination underground.

Her parents had succeeded in rubbing down to a dull glow any sparkle or splutter she had. Only with Sula did that quality have free rein,

They knew anger well but not despair, and they didn’t stone sinners for the same reason they didn’t commit suicide—it was beneath them.

“I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.”

“The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.” Sula said that.

The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either. She had no center, no speck around which to grow.