"I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies."
"I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess it up how?' " 'Forgot it.' " 'Forgot?' " 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else."
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Source: Toni Morrison (1998). “Paradise”, Knopf
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"If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down."
"The function of freedom is to free someone else."
"Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love."
"There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism."
"There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."