Quotes from A Mercy

“I dream a dream that dreams back at me”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“Here I am not the one to throw out. No one steals my warmth and shoes because I am small. No one handles my backside. No one whinnies like sheep or goat because I drop in fear and weakness. No one screams at the sight of me. No one watches my body for how it is unseemly. With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“Their drift away from others produced a selfish privacy and they had lost the refuge and the consolation of a clan. Baptists, Presbyterians, tribe, army, family, some encircling outside thing was needed. Pride, she thought. Pride alone made them think that they needed only themselves, could shape life that way, like Adam and Eve, like gods from nowhere beholden to nothing except their own creations. She should have warned them, but her devotion cautioned against impertinence. As long as Sir was alive it was easy to veil the truth: that they were not a family-not even a like-minded group. They were orphans, each and all.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“Shallow believers prefer a shallow God.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“One chance, I thought. There is no protection but there is difference. You stood there in those shoes and the tall man laughed and said he would take me to close the debt. I knew Senhor would not allow it. I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight. I knelt before him. Hoping for a miracle. He said yes.
It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human. I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: to be given dominion over another is a hard thing, to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark - weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more - but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog's profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or when a corn-husk doll sitting on a shelf is soon splaying in the corner of a room and the wicked of how it got there is plain. Stranger things happen all the time everywhere. You know. I know you know. One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read?”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“He lay wracked with pain and in moral despair; they told him about themselves, and when he felt even worse, he got an answer from God saying, Who on earth do you think you are? Question me? Let me give you a hint of who I am and what I know. But a peek into Divine knowledge was less important than gaining, at last, the Lord's attention. Which...was all Job ever wanted. Not proof of His existence-- he never questioned that. Nor proof of His power- everyone accepted that. He simply wanted to catch His eye. To be recognized not as worthy or worthless, but to be noticed as a life-form by the One who made and unmade it.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“The freezing in hell that comes before the everlasting fire where sinners bubble and singe forever.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“I don't want to be free of you because I am alive only with you.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“He relished never knowing what lay in his path, who might approach with what intention.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“Reverend Father is the only kind man I ever see. When I arrive here I believe it is the place he warns against. The freezing in hell that comes before the everlasting fire where sinners bubble and singe forever. But the ice comes first, he says. And when I see knives of it hanging from the houses and trees and feel the white air burn my face I am certain the fire is coming.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.

You shout the word—mind, mind, mind—over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“Nevertheless, remembering how the curate described what existed before creation, Scully saw dark matter out there, thick, unknowable, aching to made into a world.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“She wants you here as much as I do. For her it is to save her life. For me it is to have one.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“He couldn't stay there surrounded by a passel of slaves whose silence made him imagine an avalanche seen from a great distance. No sound, just the knowledge of a roar he could not hear.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“florens would sigh then, her head on lina's shoulder and when sleep came the little girl's smiel lingered. mother hunger – to be one or have one – both of them were reeling from that longing which, lina knes, remained alive, traveling to the bone.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“Marriages performed within,' read the sign next to the coffeehouse door, underneath in small letters a verse that combined warning with a sales pitch: 'When lawless lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“What excited and challenged her shipmates horrified the churched women and each set believed the other deeply, dangerously flawed. Although they had nothing in common with the views of each other, they had everything in common with one thing: the promise and threat of men.
Here, they agreed, was where security and risk lay. And both had come to terms.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

“What a man leaves behind is what a man is.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from A Mercy

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“What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom.”
― Naomi Klein, quote from No Logo

“Okay, okay . . . where do you hear it coming from?”
“Around here somewhere.”
“Always in this spot?”
“No. Not always. You are going to think I am even more insane, but I swear it is following me around.”
“Maybe it is my new powers. The power to drive you mad.” She wriggled her fingers at him theatrically as if she were casting a curse on him.
“You already drive me mad,” he teased, dragging her up against him and nibbling her neck with a playful growling. “Ah hell,” he broke off. “I really am going mad. I cannot believe you cannot hear that. It is like a metronome set to some ridiculously fast speed.”
He turned and walked into the living room, looking around at every shelf.
“The last person to own this place probably had a thing for music and left it running. Listen. Can you hear that?”
“No,” she said thoughtfully, “but I can hear you hearing it if I concentrate on your thoughts. What in the world . . . ?”
Gideon turned, then turned again, concentrating on the rapid sound, following it until it led him right up to his wife.
“It is you!” he said. “No wonder it is following me around. Are you wearing a watch?” He grabbed her wrist and she rolled her eyes.
“A Demon wearing a watch? Now I have heard everything.”
Suddenly Gideon went very, very still, the cold wash of chills that flooded through him so strong that she shivered with the overflow of sensation. He abruptly dropped to his knees and framed her hips with his hands.
“Oh, Legna,” he whispered, “I am such an idiot. It is a baby. It is our baby. I am hearing it’s heartbeat!”
“What?” she asked, her shock so powerful she could barely speak. “I am with child?”
“Yes. Yes, sweet, you most certainly are. A little over a month. Legna, you conceived, probably the first time we made love. My beautiful, fertile, gorgeous wife.”
Gideon kissed her belly through her dress, stood up, and caught her up against him until she squeaked with the force of his hug. Legna went past shock and entered unbelievable joy. She laughed, not caring how tight he held her, feeling his joy on a thousand different levels.
“I never thought I would know this feeling,” he said hoarsely. “Even when we were getting married, I never thought . . . It did not even enter my mind!” Gideon set her down on her feet, putting her at arm’s length as he scanned her thoroughly from head to toe. “I cannot understand why I did not become aware of this sooner. The chemical changes, the hormone levels alone . . .”
“Never mind. We know now,” she said, throwing herself back up against him and hugging him tightly. “Come, we have to tell Noah . . . and Hannah! Oh, and Bella! And Jacob, of course. And Elijah. And we should inform Siena—”
She was still rattling off names as she teleported them to the King’s castle.”
― Jacquelyn Frank, quote from Gideon

“A great deal of what they were eating was gathered or grown there. The guess about Amaranth being a hardworking lass was true. She had been a dairymaid, and had a flock of goats to provide milk, which mostly went into cheese. Andie chose to believe that the dragons had bought the goats rather than stealing them.
The girls had a good vegetable garden, a flock of hens, several beehives, the dragons brought back flour and other things they could not grow or raise themselves, and there was much they could collect from the forest in the valley below. Nuts, berries, wild olives. Cress and other edible greens and herbs. Mushrooms.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from One Good Knight

“I have a story to tell you. It has many beginnings, and perhaps one ending. Perhaps not. Beginnings and endings are contingent things anyway; inventions, devices. Where does any story really begin? There is always context, always an encompassingly greater epic, always something before the described events, unless we are to start every story with “BANG! Expand! Sssss…,” then itemize the whole subsequent history of the universe before settling down, at last, to the particular tale in question. Similarly, no ending is final, unless it is the end of all things…”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Algebraist

“Sam Rayburn on LBJ's recuperation from his heart attack: "It would kill him if he relaxed.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Master of the Senate

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