“Today is always here,’ said Sethe. ‘Tomorrow, never.”

All important things are hard.

Black people’s music is in a class by itself and always has been.

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.

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

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.

What a woman. What a life.

A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work.

Something that is loved is never lost.

You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.

Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.

We rob ourselves when we make decisions in the moment with no thought of how those decisions will impact our futures.

Wake up and ponder the future.

We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.

STAR TREK is a show that had a vision about a future that was positive.

Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.

I made education the highest priority of my campaign – actually education and jobs – and the reason is a simple one: I think the future of America depends on it.

Look to the future with hope, not envy.

People who worry about looking good typically hide what they don’t know and hide their weaknesses, so they never learn how to properly deal with them and these weaknesses remain impediments in the future.