Paule Marshall Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A silenced Haiti has once again found its literary voice.

I'll have to as you say take a stand do something toward shaking up that system. ... Despair ... is too easy an out.

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.