Pier > Pier's Quotes

“There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“What's fair ain't necessarily right.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution you were a problem.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Sethe,” he says, “me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“A man ain't a goddamn axe, choppin', hackin', bustin' every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can't chop down, because they inside.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“it was the right thing to do, but she had no right to do it.

(Introduction)”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople 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. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own. Meantime,”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I'm chasing you. I'm going to chase you until you give this a chance.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“memory is always a collaboration in progress.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“We lose ourselves,” she repeated, forming each word with care, “but we find our way back.” Wasn’t that the story of her life? Wasn’t that the story of Bethie’s? You make the wrong choices, you make mistakes, you disappear for a decade, you marry the wrong man. You get hurt. You lose sight of who you are, or of who you want to be, and then you remember, and if you’re lucky you have sisters or friends who remind you when you forget your best intentions. You come back to yourself, again and again. You try, and fail, and try again, and fail again.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Mrs. Everything

“I can't bear the thought of living an entire lifetime on this planet and not getting to do all the things I dream of doing, simply because they aren't allowed. I don't think it will ever be enough, this version of freedom, until it is all-inclusive. I don't think I can be happy unless I'm truly independent.”
― Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

“Life is like that; all things come to an end. There are some trees where owls have nested for hundreds of years, and yet at some point they leave it empty, don’t return there.”
― Andrus Kivirähk, The Man Who Spoke Snakish