He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you choose — not to need permission for desire — well now, that was f… - Toni Morrison

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose — not to need permission for desire — well now _that_ was freedom.

You been gone too long, Sula.

Not too long, but maybe too far.

Of course I'm a black writer.... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.