Gloria Naylor Quotes

Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.

I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or to make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.

A loud voice is not always angry; a soft voice not always to be dismissed; and a well-placed silence can be the indisputable last word.

There is a problem in America. An Irish or Polish American can write a story and it's an American story. When a Black American writes a story, it's called a Black story. I take exception to that. Every artist has articulated to his own experience. The problem is that some people do not see Blacks as Americans.

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go... And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

The right woman is the one you can live with, not the one in your head.

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.

The music in his laughter had a way of rounding off the missing notes in her soul.

a star dies in heaven every time you snatch away someone's dream.

Life is accepting what is and working from that.

You can't teach talent. You can't put in what God left out - but you can teach confidence.

We get so caught up in what a man isn't. It's what he is that counts.

She could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot. She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down on four.

One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work.

I don't want to write without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.

Spoiled. That's all it's about - can't live without this, can't live without that. You can live without anything you weren't born with, and you can make it through on even half of that.

The last time you're doing something - knowing you're doing it for the last - makes it even more alive than the first.

In a contest between new technology and old ways of life, it is the traditional rhythms that will hold. Traditional societies make up more than two-thirds of the world, the two-thirds that will not be going online to "save" time but will remain wedded to the knowledge that if the bus doesn't come that day, it will come someday. After all, there is nothing but time.

Words themselves are innocuous; it is the consensus that gives them true power.

It's as if I've arrived in a place where it's all spirit and no body -- an overwhelming sense of calm . . . I actually began to feel blessed.

That's one of the privileges of old age - you can give plenty of advice 'cause most folks think that's all you got left anyway.

black isn't beautiful and it isn't ugly - black is! It's not kinky hair and it's not straight hair - it just is.

Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me.

Writers are voracious readers. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. Everything was fair game, from Louisa May Alcott to my older cousin's True Romance Magazines, from Lewis Carroll to the backs of cereal boxes. All of this fed me, but it took certain books to make me grow. I don't want to work without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.

They all trying to say something with music that you can't say with plain talk. There ain't really no words for love or pain. And the way I see it, only fools go around trying to talk their love or talk their pain. So the smart people make music and you can kinda hear about it without them saying anything.