"The Bluest Eye" Quotes

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another—physical beauty.

The soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Some flowers are better in the sun, some in the shade.

We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

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

Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.

Cats were often the subject of conversation. (Is it any wonder? They personify inertia, the love of physical comfort.)

All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us.

The birdlike gestures are worn away to a mere picking and plucking her way between the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and beauty of the world—which is what she eats.

It was the color of poor people who worked in the fields, it was the color of the cat, the color of the earth, the color of the clothes people wore, it was the color of the dark, the color of the dark of the night, the color of one’s fear.