Paule Marshall Quotes & Sayings

He was one of those old people who give the impression of having undergone a lifetime trial by fire which they somehow managed to turn to their own good in the end; using the fire to burn away everything in them that could possibly decay, everything mortal. So that what remains finally are only their cast-iron hearts, the few muscles and bones tempered to the consistency of steel needed to move them about, the black skin annealed long ago by the sun's blaze and thus impervious to all other fires; and hidden deep within, out of harm's way, the indestructible will: old people who have the essentials to go on forever. — Paule Marshall

Once a great wrong has been done, it never dies. People speak the words of peace, but their hearts do not forgive. Generations perform ceremonies of reconciliation but there is no end. — Paule Marshall

We live surrounded by white images, and white in this world is synonymous with the good, light, beauty, success, so that, despite ourselves sometimes, we run after that whiteness and deny our darkness, which has been made into the symbol of all that is evil and inferior. — Paule Marshall

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

But sometimes it's necessary to go back before you can go forward, really forward. — Paule Marshall

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

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. — Paule Marshall

A silenced Haiti has once again found its literary voice. — Paule Marshall

I realise that it is fashionable now to dismiss the traditional novel as something of an anachronism, but to me it is still a vital form. Not only does it allow for the kind of full-blown, richly detailed writing that I love ... but it permits me to operate on many levels and to explore both the inner state of my characters as well as the worlds beyond them. — Paule Marshall

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. — Paule Marshall

And in a way, this was how he had come to see his death, as a series of small ones taking place over the course of his life and leading finally to the main event, which would be so anti-climatic, so undramatic (a sudden violent seizure in his long abused heart, a quick massive flooding of the brain) it would go unnoticed. It was the small deaths occurring over an entire lifetime that took the greater toll. — Paule Marshall