"This is worse than when Paul D came to 124 and she cried helplessly into the stove. This is worse. Then it was for herself. Now she is crying because she has no self . . . She doesn't move to open the door because there is no world out there. She decides to stay in the cold house and let the dark swallow her like the minnows of light above. She won't put up with another leaving, another trick. Waking up to find one brother then another not at the bottom of the bed, his foot jabbing her spine. Sitting at the table eating turnips and saving the liquor for her grandmother to drink; her mother's hand on the keeping-room door and her voice saying, 'Baby Suggs is gone, Denver.' And when she got around to worrying about what would be the case if Sethe died or Paul D took her away, a dream-come-true comes true just to leave her on a pile of newspaper in the dark."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesChildren's authorsEditors from the United StatesPlaywrights from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Toni Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford February 18, 1931 β August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor, who received a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
162 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Toni Morrison β
Related Quotes
"Reviewers tend to have trouble with a writer like Toni Morrison, getting a handle on her, because she is doing somethβ¦"
"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 β except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."
"Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is alβ¦"
"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It β¦"
"Was there anything so loathsome as a wilfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and β¦"
"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 β¦"
"Black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of blackβ¦"
"Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity seβ¦"
"The couple upstairs, united, didn't hear a sound, but below them, outside, all around 124 the snow went on and on andβ¦"