D. Simmons > D.'s Quotes

“Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.”
― Walter Mosley, Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel

“My library is an archive of longings.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“Unbelievable! You are unbelievable! First you ruin my life and then you blame it on my period!”
― Jane Aire, Black Rose, Episode One: A BDSM Novella

“Chris ordered Greek Chicken, no butter no salt, and I decided to splurge on a hamburger. To which my mama took the opportunity to point out that I could eat whatever I wanted and not get fat. She never believed me when I said I watched what I ate and exercised on the regular.

“Her daddy was the same way. Straight up and down. Course she got the tits that he ain’t have.”
― Jane Aire, Black Rose, Episode One: A BDSM Novella

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.”
― Walter Mosley

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”
― alice walker, The Color Purple

“All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Well, sometime Mr —— git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways.

You ought to bash Mr —— head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
― Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
― George Eliot

“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
― Albert Einstein

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.”
― Walter Mosley, The Long Fall

“When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself. You are not made up of compartments! You are one whole person! What gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto what gets done. Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It’s something you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. This is so simple. But I tried so hard to make it complicated.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A young woman tells you what she's "learned"

“asked me if I loved him.  Should’ve told him the truth. That I ain’t know enough about myself to love anybody. That I wasn’t even sure I had it in me. Maybe folks were born with a specific reserve of love inside them and maybe mine was all used up. But instead of saying any of that I just said, “’Of course I do.”
― D. Bryant Simmons, How to Knock a Bravebird from Her Perch: The First Novel in the Morrow Girls Series