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hello! i thought i'd put together a navi for easy access to specific quotes/reviews/books/authors that anyone might be searching for! keep in mind that this is by no means a comprehensive list and i'm sorry if the quote you're looking for isn't on here, but these are just the quotes that i found interesting and could be put here with minimal context, so here you go!

quotes by author

quotes by book

reviews!

(note: i have recently gone back and fixed all the links that didn't work, so they should all be functional now! if not, please let me know!)

thank y'all for visiting this lonely corner of the internet, and i hope you find what you need! <3

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By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

Remembering seemed unwise. They never knew where or why she crouched, or whose was the underwater face she needed like that. Where the memory of the smile under her chin might have been and was not, a latch latched and lichen attached its apple-green bloom to the metal. What made her think her fingernails could open locks the rain rained on?

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

They forgot her like a bad dream.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind—wrapped tight like skin.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

Her tenderness about his neck jewelry—its three wands, like attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet into the air. How she never mentioned or looked at it, so he did not have to feel the shame of being collared like a beast. Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to hers. "Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow."

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty bet all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing—the part of her that was clean. No undreamable dreams about whether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or Paul A; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter; whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter's private parts, soiled her daughter's thighs and threw her daughter out of the wagon. She might have to work the slaughterhouse yard, but not her daughter.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

Everything rested on Garner being alive. Without his life each of theirs fell to pieces. Now ain't that slavery or what is it?

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

Over here he is fighting hard to leave his body which is a small bird trembling there is no room to tremble so he is not able to die—

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

The more colored people spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn't the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

"You saying God gave up? Nothing left for us but pour out our own blood?" "I'm saying they came in my yard." "You punishing Him, ain't you." "Not like He punish me." "You can't do that, Baby. It ain't right." "Was a time I knew what that was."

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

If there had been sadness in her eyes he would have understood it; but indifference lodged where sadness should have been.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

After sixty years of losing children to the people who chewed up her life and spit it out like a fish bone; after five years of freedom given to her by her last child, who bought her future with his, exchanged it, so to speak, so she could have one whether he did or did not—to lose him too; to acquire a daughter and grandchildren and see that daughter slay the children (or try to); to belong to a community of other free Negroes—to love and be loved by them, to counsel and be counseled, protect and be protected, feed and be fed—and then to have that community step back and hold itself at a distance—well, it could wear out even a Baby Suggs, holy.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

This here Sethe talked about love like any other woman; talked about baby clothes like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave the bone. This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there were no one could hurt them.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

Little hummingbirds stuck their needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept.

— Toni Morrison, Beloved

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