Venus

“Hannah worried about him a little, but only a very little. For it soon became clear that he wanted a place to die privately but not quite alone.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“The real hell of Hell is that it is forever." Sula said that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell. Nel didn't understand it then, but now in the bathroom, trying to feel, she thought, "If I could be sure that I could stay here in this small white room with the dirty tile and water gurgling in the pipes and my head on the cool rim of this bathtub and never have to go out the door, I would be happy. If I could be certain that I never had to get up and flush the toilet, go in the kitchen, watch my children grow up and die, see my food chewed on my plate... Sula was wrong. Hell ain't things lasting forever. Hell is change.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“In my house I am the presence you are familiar with, as you can see me now. I am as women of my professional past often are, made practical through bedroom dealings, made sentimental through fear. I know all that, I do not deny it. I do not care much for the woman I am, but there you are. None of us has a choice in that.”
― William Trevor, Two Lives

“They did not believe death was accidental--life might be, but death was deliberate. They did not believe Nature was ever askew--only inconvenient. Plague and drought were as "natural" as springtime. If milk could curdle, God knows robins could fall. The purpose of evil was to survive it and they determined (without ever knowing they had made up their minds to it) to survive floods, white people, tuberculosis, famine and ignorance. They knew anger well but not dispair, and they didn't stone sinners for the same reason they didn't commit suicide--it was beneath them.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula