Toni Morrison Quotes

Quotes about:

• 

  If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

  Toni Morrison

  Giving Up, Want, Getting Things Done

  191 Copy quote

• There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Self, Civilization

  "In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent" by Toni Morrison, www.thenation.com. March 23, 2013.

  132 Copy quote

• I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Pain, Important

  "No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear" by Toni Morrison, www.thenation.com. March 23, 2015.

  124 Copy quote

• The function of freedom is to free someone else.

  Toni Morrison

  Love, Responsibility, Revolutionary

  149 Copy quote

• I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.

  Toni Morrison

  Jobs, Freedom, Real

  118 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

  Toni Morrison

  Race, Racism, Social

  "Toni Morrison Breaks Down The Reality Of Race On The Colbert Report" by Jessica Dickerson, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 21, 2014.

  143 Copy quote

• If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

  Toni Morrison

  Inspirational, Happiness, Attitude

  135 Copy quote

• From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.

  Toni Morrison

  Destiny, Views, Waiting

  29 Copy quote

• I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are

  Toni Morrison

  Decision, Safe, Want

  62 Copy quote

• You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human... And although you don't have complete control over the narrative - no author does, I can tell you - you could nevertheless create it.

  Toni Morrison

  Inspirational, Graduation, Mean

  "These Great Commencement Speeches Will Change How You Look at Success and Failure" by Matt Miller, www.esquire.com. May 5, 2017.

  28 Copy quote
• 

  Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

  Toni Morrison

  Book, Reflection, Political

  Source: wordmag.com

  71 Copy quote

• Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

  Toni Morrison

  Inspirational, Women, Differences

  Interview with Zia Jaffrey, www.salon.com. February 02, 1998.

  43 Copy quote

• Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Waiting, Waiting For You

  90 Copy quote

• All important things are hard.

  Toni Morrison

  Important, Important Things, Hard

  32 Copy quote

• A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.

  Toni Morrison

  Order, Giving, Pieces

  32 Copy quote

• It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Years, Racism

  "Black Studies Center public dialogue. Pt. 2 (A Humanist View)", May 30, 1975.

  127 Copy quote

• Laughter is more serious than tears.

  Toni Morrison

  Laughter, Tears, Serious

  16 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.

  Toni Morrison

  Life, Beauty, Thank You

  FaceBook post by Toni Morrison from Nov 06, 2011

  49 Copy quote

• Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

  Toni Morrison

  Definitions, Beloved, Defined

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

  71 Copy quote

• The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

  Toni Morrison

  Thinking, Diversity, Tolerance

  Toni Morrison (2007). “The Dancing Mind”, p.6, Vintage

  86 Copy quote

• Let your face speak what's in your heart.

  Toni Morrison

  Heart, Faces, Speak

  "Trust yourself: What's the best parenting advice you ever got?" by Dana Macario, www.today.com. October 5, 2012.

  16 Copy quote

• You are your best thing

  Toni Morrison

  Inspiring, Best Things

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.251, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  37 Copy quote

• Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

  Toni Morrison

  Love, Self Respect, Humiliation

  153 Copy quote

• Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.

  Toni Morrison

  Racism, People, Gone

  Source: www.npr.org

  90 Copy quote

• I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense, but not irrational, nor naïve - because art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Journey, Cost

  FaceBook post by Toni Morrison from May 29, 2013

  42 Copy quote

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