The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for this novel. Set in rural Ohio during the mid-1900's, a young and apparently unnattractive African-American girl is presented with the difficulties of growing up surrounded by white hegemony, domestic violence, and rape.

"There is really nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuse in how."

"Adults do not talk to us--they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information."

"The smoke from their cigarettes they inhaled deeply, forcing it to fill their lungs, their hearts, their thighs, and keep at bay the shiveriness, the energy of their youth. They moved slowly, laughed slowly, but flicked the ashes from their cigarettes too quickly too often, and exposed themselves, to those who were interested, as novices to the habit."

"Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging."

"There in the dark her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Bother originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion."

"Love is never any better than the lover."