Toni Morrison Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

  Toni Morrison

  Country, War, Class

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.255, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  11 Copy quote

• The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.

  Toni Morrison

  Patriotic, Differences, Humane

  7 Copy quote

• At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.

  Toni Morrison

  Beautiful, Letting Go, Needs

  FaceBook post by Toni Morrison from Jan 19, 2017

  28 Copy quote

• Passion is never enough; neither is skill.

  Toni Morrison

  Passion, Skills, Enough

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

  18 Copy quote

• I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

  Toni Morrison

  Summer, Dust, Sky

  181 Copy quote

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

  Toni Morrison

  Passion, Leisure, Violence

  Toni Morrison (2014). “The Bluest Eye”, p.138, Random House

  19 Copy quote

• Two parents can't raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community - everybody - to raise a child. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for white people or for black people. Why are we hanging onto it, I don't know. It isolates people into little units - people need a larger unit.

  Toni Morrison

  Family, Children, Two

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.260, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

• She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

  Toni Morrison

  Gratitude, Hurt, Beer

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

  9 Copy quote

• Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?

  Toni Morrison

  Jesus, Hate, Giving

  FaceBook post by Toni Morrison from Jun 30, 2011

  8 Copy quote

• Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.

  Toni Morrison

  Unmotivated

  Toni Morrison (1998). “Paradise”, Knopf

  8 Copy quote

• How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.

  Toni Morrison

  Imagination, Wish, Trying

  Toni Morrison (1998). “Paradise”, Knopf

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

  Toni Morrison

  Broken Heart, Running, Men

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.260, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  73 Copy quote

• Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.

  Toni Morrison

  Mom, Daughter, Literature

  "Beloved". Book by Toni Morrison, September 1987.

  9 Copy quote

• Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Scared, Knows

  "Toni Morrison cancels memoir contract due to 'not interesting' life" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

• There's a contract that I make between myself, the author, and the reader. I have to figure out how to give the reader certain powers of recognition, or his own knowledge, his own feelings, but I provide them, so we're working together.

  Toni Morrison

  Giving, Feelings, Working Together

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

  5 Copy quote

• Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.

  Toni Morrison

  Real, Race, Information

  5 Copy quote

• New York is the last true city.

  Toni Morrison

  New York, Cities, Lasts

  13 Copy quote

• And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.

  Toni Morrison

  Moving, Dark, Night

  16 Copy quote

• I'm a writer in the world. I translate the confusion that I might feel, the dread that I know I feel, moving towards some other place, moving away from puny language, from all that dread into some other kind of language.

  Toni Morrison

  Moving, Confusion, World

  Source: wordmag.com

  5 Copy quote

• Being able to laugh got me through.

  Toni Morrison

  Laughing, Able, Civil Rights

  14 Copy quote

• I am a moralist. I worry.

  Toni Morrison

  Worry, Moralist

  Source: wordmag.com

  5 Copy quote

• If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

  Toni Morrison, Carolyn C. Denard (2008). “What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction”, p.71, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

• I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.

  Toni Morrison

  Baby, Writing, Way

  13 Copy quote

• It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.

  Toni Morrison

  Love You, Bad Word, Humans

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

  8 Copy quote

• The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.

  Toni Morrison

  Friendship, Beautiful, Real Friends

  Toni Morrison (2014). “Beloved”, Random House

  20 Copy quote

Page 6 of 18

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin