"I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies."
"Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon-everything belonged to the men who had the guns. . . . So you protected yourself and loved small. . . . A woman, a child, a brother-a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. . . . To get to a place where you could love anything you chose-not to need permission for desire-well now, that was freedom"
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Source: Toni Morrison (1992). “Jazz”, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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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."