Beloved Quotes

“To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The ‘better life’ she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one.”

“I am Beloved and she is mine. I see her take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing”

“You your best thing, Sethe. You are.”

“Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can’t hold another bite? . . . But my greedy brain says, Oh thanks, I’d love more . . . my brain would go right ahead and take it and never say, No thank you. I don’t want to know or have to remember that.”

“Working dough. Working, working dough. Nothing better than that to start that day’s serious work of beating back the past.”

“I don’t have to remember nothing. I don’t even have to explain. She understands it all...”

“Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?”

“But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.”

“Denver looked up at her. She did not know it then, but it was the word ‘baby’, said softly with such kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman”

“The future was sunset; the past was something to leave behind. And if it didn’t stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out.”

“My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that’s all I remember.”

“A man ain’t nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that’s somebody”

“Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”

“This and much more Denver heard her say from her corner chair, trying to persuade Beloved, the one and only person she felt she had to convince, that what she had done was right because it came from true love.”

“By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather.”

“Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don’t know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed.”

“I don’t care what she is. Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that supposed to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.”

“Nothing ever dies.”

“You are my face; I am you. Why did you leave me who am you? I will never leave you again Don’t ever leave me again You will never leave me again You went in the water I drank your blood I brought your milk You forgot to smile I loved you You hurt me You came back to me You left me I waited for you You are mine You are mine You are mine”