“I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.”

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.

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

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.

I brought color to bridal. There was one whole season of blush. If you think about the bareness, the illusion (fabric), the corsets that I did in bridal, they were trends in ready-to-wear, too.

If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.

We all move on the fringes of eternity and are sometimes granted vistas through fabric of illusion.

Out of the doctrine of original sin grew the crimes and miseries of asceticism, celibacy and witchcraft; woman becoming the helpless victim of all these delusions.

Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.

Everyone chases fairytales and magic until love becomes an illusion.

Mirrors are used in magic to distort what we see. They are the love child of illusion, lies, tragedy.

Rulers who destroy men’s freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. … They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.