Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like n… - Toni Morrison

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.