The Bluest Eye — Vocabulary
Toni Morrison
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Consequently we were not royal but snobbish, not aristocratic but class-conscious; we believed authority was cruelty to our inferiors, and education was being at school.2 more

Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme.†2 more

I don't recollect trying to get pregnant that first time.7 more

The most exquisite-looking ladies sat on toilets, and the most dreadful-looking had pure and holy yearnings.†8 more

Restricted, as a child, to this cocoon of her family's spinning, she cultivated quiet and private pleasures.5 more

He could go to jail and not feel imprisoned, for he had already seen the furtiveness in the eyes of his jailer, free to say, "No, suh," and smile, for he had already killed three white men.4 more

It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth.5 more

A little examination and much less melancholy would have proved to us that our seeds were not the only ones that did not sprout; nobody's did.†4 more

When I took it to bed, its hard unyielding limbs resisted my flesh—the tapered fingertips on those dimpled hands scratched.†2 more

It was time to put all of the pieces together, make coherence where before there had been none.2 more

He believed that since decay, vice, filth, and disorder were pervasive, they must be in the Nature of Things.2 more

They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance.†1 more

When she was assigned a locker next to mine, I could indulge my jealousy four times a day.†2 more

She never had to search for anybody to eat with in the cafeteria—they flocked to the table of her choice, where she opened fastidious lunches, shaming our jelly-stained bread with egg-salad sandwiches cut into four dainty squares, pink-frosted cupcakes, sticks of celery and carrots, proud, dark apples.†4 more

This family, on a Saturday morning in October, began, one by one, to stir out of their dreams of affluence and vengeance into the anonymous misery of their storefront.†2 more

They would sleep with their husbands, and take their money, but always with a vengeance.†2 more

The extremity of Pecola's case stemmed largely from a crippled and crippling family—unlike the average black family and unlike the narrator's.†1 more

Our manhood was denned by acquisitions.†1 more

First, it was a familiar phrase, familiar to me as a child listening to adults; to black women conversing with one another, telling a story, an anecdote, gossip about some one or event within the circle, the family, the neighborhood.†1 more

We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.1 more