Toni Morrison is one of my favorite novelists. This Fall, for a class I'm teaching on Characterization, we're reading Sula. I've just started rereading it.

Speaking of re-reading, when Toni Morrison came to the Oprah show to talk about Beloved, Gayle King (Oprah's best friend) was saying that the book was so dense that she had to keep going back and reading stuff again and again. Toni Morrison said to her, kindly, "That's called reading." 

I always tell my students that story.

I had the opportunity to see Toni Morrison speak in conversation with Dorothy Allison a few years ago at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts. What a great night that was!