Essayists From The United States

"Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

"Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him. They were always women who had been spoiled children. Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight. They could not believe or accept the fact that they were unloved; they believed that the world itself was off balance when it appeared as though they were not loved. Why did they think they were so lovable? Why did they think their brand of love was better than, or even as good as, anybody else's? But they did. And they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way."

"It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing."

"To the artist one can only say, not to be confused, — not to be confused. You don’t waste your energy fighting the fever; you must only fight the disease. And the disease is not racism. It is greed and the struggle for power. And I urge you to be careful. For there is a deadly prison: the prison that is erected when one spends one’s life fighting phantoms, concentrating on myths, and explaining over and over to the conqueror your language, your lifestyle, your history, your habits. And you don’t have to do it anymore. You can go ahead and talk straight to me. To avoid the prison of reacting to racism is a problem of the very first order. Where the mind dwells on changing the minds of racists is a very dank place. Where the spirit hangs limp in silk cords of the racial apologists who want soft and delicate treatment for the poor victims is a very dim place. And where the will that you allow to be eroded day by day, day by day, by consistent assaults from racists, then the will just settles into a little tiny heap of sand, and you just have a second-rate existence, jammed with second-hand ideas."

"It would seem that to continue to see race of people, any race of people as one single personality is an ignorance of gothic proportions, an ignorance so vast, so public, and perception so blind and so blunted, imagination so bleak that no nuance, no subtlety, no difference among them can be ascertained. Which may explain in part why in 1975 we are left with pretty much the same mental equipment we had in 1775 — the equipment that hadn’t the curiosity to record the names of human beings in a ship’s manifest, hasn’t the curiosity to examine the medieval minds of scientific racists, theologic [sic] racists, historical racists, literary racists; an intelligence that is so crippled that it could in all seriousness ask W.E.B. Du Bois, in 1905, in pursuit of some study as a White professor from Clark University did, whether colored people shed tears."

"Racial ignorance is a prison from which there is no escape because there’re no doors. And there are old, old men, and old, old women running institutions, governments, homes all over the world who need to believe in their racism and need to have the victims of racism concentrate all their creative abilities on them. And they are very easily identified. They are the petulant ones who call themselves proud, and they are the disdainful ones who call themselves fastidious, and they are the mean-spirited ones who call themselves just. They thrive on the failures of those unlike them; they are the ones who measure their wealth by the desperation of the poor. They are the ones who know personal success only when they can identify deficiencies in other racial and ethnic groups. They are in prisons of their own construction: and their ignorance and their stunted emotional growth consistently boggle the mind."

"The mirror by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his — his own — that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake."

"It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow."

"We are the moral inhabitants of the globe. And to deny it is to lie in prison. Oh yes, there’s cruelty, and cruelty, because it destroys the perpetuator as well as the victim, is a very mysterious thing. But if you look at the world as one long brutal game between “us” and “them,” then you bump into another mystery. And that’s the mystery of the tree-shaped scar, and the canary that might sing on the crown of a scar. And unless all races and all ages of man have been totally deluded, there seems to be such a thing as grace, such a thing as beauty, such a thing as harmony — all of which are wholly free, and available to us."

"No one can blame the conqueror for writing history the way he sees it, and certainly not for digesting human events and discovering their patterns according to his own point of view. But it must be admitted … that conventional history supports and complements a very grave and almost pristine ignorance. Because the very nature of history is to make large distinctions, it encourages the intellect, therefore, to forgo finer ones. Because historians must deal with rice in bulk, rather than grain-by-grain, heavy dependence on the conventions of that discipline lead us to do likewise in human relationships. If such history continues to be the major informer of our sensibilities, we will remain functionally unintelligent. Because, after all, it is the ability to make distinctions — and the smaller the distinctions made, the higher the intellect that makes them — by which we judge intellect."

"In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood."

"Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous."

"Toni Morrison and I and Leslie Marmon Silko traveled through China together five years ago, with Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Francine du Plessix Gray. ..Toni Morrison talked about her method of writing-she saw the novel like a big painting, all black, and then there's orange over here and blue over here. So she thinks about various incidents in color terms: because maybe we have some blood red over here, we've got to balance with some more over here. Like a painter...In Beloved, she is getting for the black people alive now, for all of us, she's getting the energy from the ancestors. The way you get energy from the ancestors is you find out the truth about them. Some of her images-putting a gag in a slave's mouth that has to do with silence and voice and freedom. By writing that book she takes the gag out. Toni is so important. The Chinese have had a lot of help remembering ancestors because we have a whole religion around it. But there's been all kinds of attacks against blacks to take the history away, take the voice away. That's what it means to put that gag on. Toni is someone who can tap into her ancestral memory, her collective unconscious."

"It is sprinkling now. A teasing August rain that raises expectations it cannot fill."

"I know what every colored woman in this country is doing. . . . Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world."

"What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?"

"They stayed that way for a while because neither Denver nor Sethe knew how not to: how to stop and not love the look or feel of the lips that kept on kissing."

"What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them."

"Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth."

"I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, "You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there." So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work."

"white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President"

"In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate."

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."

"They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun."

"I was thrilled that my mother is still alive and can share this with me. And I can claim representation in so many areas. I'm a Midwesterner, and everyone in Ohio is excited. I'm also a New Yorker, and a New Jerseyan, and an American, plus I'm an African-American, and a woman. I know it seems like I'm spreading like algae when I put it this way, but I'd like to think of the prize being distributed to these regions and nations and races."

"Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

"Black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men."

"Was there anything so loathsome as a wilfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines."

"Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city... Numbers here constitute an address, a thrilling enough prospect for slaves who had owned nothing, least of all an address. And although the numbers, unlike words, can have no modifiers, I give these an adjective — spiteful… A few words have to be read before it is clear that 124 refers to a house … and a few more have to be read to discover why it is spiteful, or rather the source of the spite. By then it is clear, if not at once, that something is beyond control, but is not beyond understanding since it is not beyond accommodation by both the "women" and the "children." The fully realized presence of the haunting is both a major incumbent of the narrative and sleight of hand. One of its purposes is to keep the reader preoccupied with the nature of the incredible spirit world while being supplied a controlled diet of the incredible political world. … Here I wanted the compelling confusion of being there as they (the characters) are; suddenly, without comfort or succor from the "author," with only imagination, intelligence, and necessity available for the journey. …. No compound of houses, no neighborhood, no sculpture, no paint, no time, especially no time because memory, pre-historic memory, has no time. There is just a little music, each other and the urgency of what is at stake. Which is all they had. For that work, the work of language is to get out of the way."

"Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us."

"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was."

"You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?"

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can."

"Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty."

"There is really nothing more to say — except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."

"We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow."

"You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you."

"I always know the ending; that's where I start."

"People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race’. This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes."

"Thank God for Cool Herc Without this shit I probably would’ve got murked Shout outs to Grandmaster Flash and the cash And even Jaz bum ass"

"If Jeezy's payin' LeBron, I'm payin' Dwyane Wade Three dice Cee-lo, three Card Molly Labor Day Parade, rest in peace Bob Marley Statue of Liberty, long live the World Trade Long live the King yo, I'm from the Empire State that's"

"With the same sword they knight you, they gon' good night you with Shit, that's only half if they like you That ain't even the half what they might do Don't believe me, ask Michael See Martin, see Malcolm See Biggie, see Pac, see success and its outcome See Jesus, see Judas See Caesar, see Brutus, see success is like suicide Suicide, it's a suicide If you succeed, prepare to be crucified Media meddles, niggas sue you, you settle Every step you take, they remind you you're ghetto So it's tough being Bobby Brown To be Bobby then, you have to be Bobby now And the question is, "Is to have had and lost Better than not having at all?"

"If you want to make more than Jay-Z, go do more than Jay-Z."

"I guess it's just the need to be heard / I need niggas to say / I can't believe your words / I'm just an addict / Addicted to music / Thoughts is sporadic / I gotta un-confuse it / Sorta like a Rubik's Cube is / Every albums' a color / But I fuck up the other / Color / (laughs) I guess I'm more like / A bitch with a belly but her ass is right / (laughs) Y'all don't understand me still / I never enjoy my success but my family will / And I'm alright with that / So the rap Jerry Rice is back / To fulfill a need / Though I lead the league / I pray everyday I travel at God Speed / Not a minute slower cause the minute you Hova / Everybody praying for your spinach to slow up / It's sad but it's true / But nigga's ass gone turn blue / Holding' ya breath, cause the force that's controlling my step / Won't let me lose it till I'm undisputed / Until I'm one with the music / Till I'm dead and gone in search of the perfect song* -"

"This ain't no tall order, this is nothin to me Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week"

"("No one on the corner") Got a bop like this Can't wear skinny jeans cause my knots don't fit No one on the corner got a pocket like this So I rock Roc jeans cause my knots so thick You can pay for school, but you can't buy class"

"I'm still here mon frere I know the cross I bear, They like, that's why they call you Hov? I'm like yea I'm like air, little shots go through me, won't tear One tissue no tears, no tissue not an issue"

"I heard motherfuckers saying they made Hov Made Hov say, "Ok so, make another Hov""

"A wise man told me don't argue with fools Cause people from a distance can't tell who is who"

"While I'm watchin every nigga watchin me closely my shit is butter for the bread they wanna toast me I keep my head, both of them where they supposed to be Hoes'll get you sidetracked then clap from closed feet"