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Reading fiction can be a refreshing and uplifting escape from reality, especially if the writer can evoke emotion in the reader. There’s no sentiment that awakens our mental, physical, and emotional sensibilities like love in all its many forms,and African-American literature spawns some of the best quotes about love and relationships, like these 13 from some of our favorite women authors like Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, Sonia Sanchez, and more.
“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.”
~~~Toni Morrison, Jazz
“Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.”
~~~Nikki Giovanni
“There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. “
~~~Toni Morrison, Paradise
“The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.”
~~~ Zadie Smith, On Beauty
“Back then I confused passions and orgasms with love. It took me years to realize the two weren’t synonymous.”
~~~Terry McMillan, Getting to Happy
“To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.”
~~~Bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
“Paradise is one’s own place, One’s own people, One’s own world, Knowing and known,
Perhaps even Loving and loved.”
~~~Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
“Kindness eases change, Love quiets fear.”
~~~Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
“The leaves believe such letting go is love, such love is faith, such faith is grace, such grace is God.
I agree with the leaves.”
~~~Lucille Clifton, “the lesson of the falling leaves”
“I found God in myself, and I loved her, I loved her fiercely.”
~~~Ntozake Shange
“I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.”
~~~ Alice Walker
“If we lose love and self-respect for each other, this is how we finally die.”
~~~Maya Angelou
“No. Don’t never go looking for love girl. Just wait. It’ll come. Like the rain fallin’ from the heaven, it’ll come. Just don’t never give up on love.”
~~~Sonia Sanchez
