Beloved Quotes
The House:
“124, rocking with laughter, goodwill…”
“124 had been a cheerful, buzzing house”
“124 was spiteful”
“full of a baby’s venom”
“124 was loud”
“124 was quiet”
“screaming house”
“breathing”
“floorboards were” “shaking”
Amy Denver:
“arms like cane stalks”
“strong as iron”
“carmine velvet”
“the velvet is like the world was just born. Clean and new and so smooth”
“fugitive eyes”
“they don’t believe I’m a get it, but I am”
“raggediest-looking trash”
Sethe:
Her feet were “so swollen that she could not see her arch or feel her ankles”
“Some things just stay”.
“stole your milk”
“They took my milk!”
“every mention of her past life hurt”
“the hurt was always there”
“She would get that milk to her baby girl”
Her scars like “A chokecherry tree”
“Your love is too thick”
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
“You got two feet, Sethe, not four.”
“I took and put my babies where they’d be safe”
“I couldn’t love em proper in Kentucky, because they wasn’t mine to love.”
“hawk”
“she’d gone wild”
“animal” “horse” “hound” “snake or bear”
“skinned for profit”
, “shadows of three people still held hands”
“I am Beloved and she is mine.”
“Gone.” “Long gone.”
“bladder filled to capacity”
Denver:
“Paul D messed them up for good”
“things she halfway told”
Baby Suggs:
“pondered color”
“She never had time to see it, let alone enjoy it before”
“What does a sixty-odd-year-old slavewoman […] need freedom for?”
“it meant more to him that she go free than anything in the world”
“That’s all you let yourself remember”
“eight children and that’s all I remember”
“All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread”
“being alive was the hard part”
“her past had been like her present – intolerable”
“she couldn’t get interested in leaving life or living it”
“she knew death was anything but forgetfulness”
“My husband’s spirit was to come back in here? Or yours?”
“just one”
“I had eight”
“gone away from me”
“four taken, four chased”
“her great big heart”
“she had overstepped”
“disapproval”
“reckless generosity”
“Her faith, her love, her imagination and her great big old heart began to collapse twenty-eight
days after her daughter-in-law arrived.”
“she knew more about them than she knew about herself”
Beloved:
“a white dress knelt down next to her mother and its sleeve around her mother’s waist”
“I want you to touch me on the inside part and call me my name”
“crawling already? girl”
“in those big, black eyes there was no expression at all.”
“magical appearance” “magical disappearance”
The House:
“124, rocking with laughter, goodwill…”
“124 had been a cheerful, buzzing house”
“124 was spiteful”
“full of a baby’s venom”
“124 was loud”
“124 was quiet”
“screaming house”
“breathing”
“floorboards were” “shaking”
Amy Denver:
“arms like cane stalks”
“strong as iron”
“carmine velvet”
“the velvet is like the world was just born. Clean and new and so smooth”
“fugitive eyes”
“they don’t believe I’m a get it, but I am”
“raggediest-looking trash”
Sethe:
Her feet were “so swollen that she could not see her arch or feel her ankles”
“Some things just stay”.
“stole your milk”
“They took my milk!”
“every mention of her past life hurt”
“the hurt was always there”
“She would get that milk to her baby girl”
Her scars like “A chokecherry tree”
“Your love is too thick”
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
“You got two feet, Sethe, not four.”
“I took and put my babies where they’d be safe”
“I couldn’t love em proper in Kentucky, because they wasn’t mine to love.”
“hawk”
“she’d gone wild”
“animal” “horse” “hound” “snake or bear”
“skinned for profit”
, “shadows of three people still held hands”
“I am Beloved and she is mine.”
“Gone.” “Long gone.”
“bladder filled to capacity”
Denver:
“Paul D messed them up for good”
“things she halfway told”
Baby Suggs:
“pondered color”
“She never had time to see it, let alone enjoy it before”
“What does a sixty-odd-year-old slavewoman […] need freedom for?”
“it meant more to him that she go free than anything in the world”
“That’s all you let yourself remember”
“eight children and that’s all I remember”
“All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread”
“being alive was the hard part”
“her past had been like her present – intolerable”
“she couldn’t get interested in leaving life or living it”
“she knew death was anything but forgetfulness”
“My husband’s spirit was to come back in here? Or yours?”
“just one”
“I had eight”
“gone away from me”
“four taken, four chased”
“her great big heart”
“she had overstepped”
“disapproval”
“reckless generosity”
“Her faith, her love, her imagination and her great big old heart began to collapse twenty-eight
days after her daughter-in-law arrived.”
“she knew more about them than she knew about herself”
Beloved:
“a white dress knelt down next to her mother and its sleeve around her mother’s waist”
“I want you to touch me on the inside part and call me my name”
“crawling already? girl”
“in those big, black eyes there was no expression at all.”
“magical appearance” “magical disappearance”
