At one point – I don’t want to give away too much of the actual story – but at one point, she’s in an accident and breaks her foot, so she’s kind of immobilized. And so she’s thinking [reads aloud]:

Helpless, idle, it became clear to Bride why boredom was so fought against. Without distraction or physical activity, the mind shuffled pointless, scattered recollections around and around.

And that strikes me as, like, what you’re talking about when you’re not writing, when your mind is idle, that it just kind of goes through the shuffle of thoughts – in your case, negative thoughts [laughter] – that you dwell on in a way that you’d prefer not to.

— Terry Gross interviewing Toni Morrison and reading from her book God Help the Child

You can listen to the full interview here.