25 Quotes by Paule Marshall

My very first lessons in the art of telling stories took place in the kitchen . . . my mother and three or four of her friends. . . told stories. . .with effortless art and technique. They were natural-born storytellers in the oral tradition.

Perhaps she was both child and woman, darkness and light, past and present, life and death - all the opposites contained and reconciled in her.

A person can run for years but sooner or later he has to take a stand in the place which, for better or worse, he calls home, and do what he can to change things there.

But sometimes it’s necessary to go back before you can go forward, really forward.

Sometimes a person has to go back, really back-to have a sense, an understanding of all that’s gone to make them-before they can go forward.

Perhaps she was both child and woman, darkness and light, past and present, life and death – all the opposites contained and reconciled in her.

I question whether I want to be integrated into America as it stands now, with its complacency and materialism, its soullessness...