Toni Morrison

They were not holding hands, but their shadows were.

Nobody loved her and she wouldn't have liked it if they had, for she considered love a serious disability.

Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. "She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."

THERE IS a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin.
Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down.
It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.

“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it.

“Strange motherfuckers,” he whispered. “Strange.” If he wanted lay off, he thought, why didn’t he just say that? Just come to me like a man and say, Cool it. You cool it and I’ll cool it. We’ll both cool it. And I’d say, Okay, you got it. But no. He comes to me with some way-out tale about how come and why.

“What’d he do it for?” asked Freddie. “He knew he was in Mississippi. What he think that was? Tom Sawyer Land?”
“So he whistled! So what!” Guitar was steaming. “He supposed to die for that?”
“He from the North,” said Freddie. “Acting big down in Bilbo country. Who the hell he think he is?”
“Thought he was a man, that’s what,” said Railroad Tommy.
“Well, he thought wrong,” Freddie said. “Ain’t no black men in Bilbo country.”

“South’s bad,” Porter said. “Bad. Don’t nothing change in the good old U.S. of A. Bet his daddy got his balls busted off in the Pacific somewhere.”

He wondered what they would do if they didn’t have black and white problems to talk about. Who would they be if they couldn’t describe the insults, violence, and oppression that their lives (and the television news) were made up of? If they didn’t have Kennedy or Elijah to quarrel about? They excused themselves for everything. Every job of work undone, every bill unpaid, every illness, every death was The Man’s fault.

People behaved much better, were more polite, more understanding when Milkman was drunk. The alcohol didn’t change him at all, but it had a tremendous impact on whomever he saw while he was under its influence.