“She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.”

I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.

And I can’t die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I’m a cracked plate.

People can be slave ships in shoes.

Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see.

She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done ‘heard’ bout you just what they hope done happened.

Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.

The sun had become a light yellow yolk and was walking with red legs across the sky.

Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches

She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.

He looked like the love thoughts of women.

In the cool afternoon the fiend from hell specifically sent to lovers arrived at Janie’s ear. Doubt.

She wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her.

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

The dance goes from realizing that you’re separate (which is the awakening) to then trying to find your way back into the totality of which you are not only a part, but which you are.

Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.

When we bring deep awareness to whatever’s bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently.

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.