Author Toni Morrison wrote powerful books for decades, from 1970’s The Bluest Eye to this year’s The Source of Self-Regard. But she’s best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved, which follows a former slave named Sethe and her family in 1873 Ohio.
With the news of Morrison’s passing, we want to remember the most compelling quotes from the Nobel Prize-winner’s novel.
“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
“He wants to put his story next to hers.”
“He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion—’
‘I don’t,’ She said. ‘I have my own.’”
“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”
“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”
“Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.”
“You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.”