Bee > Bee's Quotes

“Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.”
― Toni Morrison

“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.”
― Toni Morrison

“They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations...”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked.

Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’

The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“They shoot the white girl first, but the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are 17 miles from a town which has 90 miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the convent, but there is time, and the day has just begun. They are nine. Over twice the number of the women, they are obliged to stampede or kill, and they have the paraphernalia for either requirement--rope, a palm leaf cross, handcuffs, mace, and sunglasses, along with clean, handsome guns.”
― Toni Morrison, Paradise

“It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had. *Milkman*”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?”
― Toni Morrison

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”
― Stephen King, Bag of Bones

“Life seemed nearest to acceptable at four A.M.”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“It was a matter of perspective, I began to see.
The whole world was crazy; I'd flattered myself by assuming I was a semifinalist."
-- Dolores Price”
― Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

“You save yourself or you remain unsaved.”
― Alice Sebold

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
― James Baldwin

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”
― James Baldwin

“If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.”
― James Baldwin

“It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.”
― James Baldwin

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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

“We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.”
― Marianne Williamson

“Nothing is easy to the unwilling.”
― Nikki Giovanni

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”
― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“The peace of God is with them whose mind and soul are in harmony, who are free from desire and wrath, who know their own soul.”
― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“Freedom from activity is never achieved by abstaining from action. Nobody can become perfect by merely ceasing to act. In fact, nobody can ever rest from his activity even for a moment. All are helplessly forced to act. . . .
A man who renounces certain physical actions but still lets his mind dwell on the objects of his sensual desire, is deceiving himself. He can only be called a hypocrite. The truly admirable man controls his senses by the power of his will. All his actions will be disinterested.
Activity is better than inertia. Act, but with self-control. If you are lazy, you cannot even sustain your own body.”
― Anonymous, BHAGAVAD GITA: EL CANTO DEL SEÑOR

“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein