Toni Morrison

You are your best thing.

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

I always thought I was able and competent all the while I was rearing them.

it's not profound regret. It's just a wiping up of tiny, little messes that you didn't recognize as a mess when they were going on

Writing before dawn began as a necessity—I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, “Mama”—and that was always around five in the morning. Many years later, after I stopped working at Random House, I just stayed at home for a couple of years. I discovered things about myself I had never thought about before.

I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, “Well, that’s a ritual.” And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular … For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.