Toni Morrison Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.

  Toni Morrison

  Sympathy, Pain, Suffering

  10 Copy quote

• Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

  Toni Morrison

  Ideas, Racism, Typical

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

  23 Copy quote

• Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

  Toni Morrison

  Differences, Sublime, Meaning Of Life

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

  8 Copy quote

• Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it will come.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Waiting, Trying

  8 Copy quote

• It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

  Toni Morrison

  Circles, Long, Sorrow

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

  35 Copy quote

• Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission. No committee decides who may enter, no crisis of body or spirit must accompany the entrant. No tuition is charged, no oath sworn, no visa demanded. Of the monuments humans build for themselves, very few say - touch me, use me, my hush is not indifference, my space is not barrier. If I inspire awe, it is because I am in awe of you and the possibilities that dwell in you.

  Toni Morrison

  Civilization, Space, Inspire

  19 Copy quote

• When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.

  Toni Morrison

  Important, Information, Stuff

  8 Copy quote

• One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Giving, Said

  15 Copy quote

• The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.

  Toni Morrison

  Hate, Race, Play

  Source: www.goodreads.com

  20 Copy quote

• Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

  Toni Morrison

  Literature, Seems

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

  6 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

• True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.

  Toni Morrison

  Jobs, Children, Fall

  Toni Morrison, Carolyn C. Denard (2008). “What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction”, p.24, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  25 Copy quote

• Black people's music is in a class by itself and always has been. There's nothing like it. The reason for that is because it was not tampered with by white people. It was not on the media. It was not anywhere except where black people were. And it is one of the art forms in which black people decided what is good in it. Nobody told them. What surfaced and what floated to the top, were the giants and the best.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Media, Class

  15 Copy quote

• You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.

  Toni Morrison

  Connotation, Sentences, Rely

  7 Copy quote

• You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.

  Toni Morrison

  Thinking, Unthinkable, Willing

  6 Copy quote

• I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.

  Toni Morrison

  Inspiration, Writing, Compelled

  11 Copy quote

• A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.

  Toni Morrison

  Sister, Sibling, Special

  89 Copy quote

• Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

  Toni Morrison

  Reality, Lovely, Awareness

  Toni Morrison (2017). “Race: Vintage Minis”, p.33, Random House

  14 Copy quote

• And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

  Toni Morrison

  Dream, Book, Wine

  8 Copy quote

• Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It's more provocative to me and more stimulating to me.

  Toni Morrison

  Evil, Complicated, Boring

  Source: wordmag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.

  Toni Morrison

  Responsibility, Leader, Taking Responsibility

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.259, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  10 Copy quote

• The writing is - I'm free of pain. It's the place where I live; it's where I have control; it's where nobody tells me what to do; it's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing.

  Toni Morrison

  Pain, Writing, Imagination

  "'I Regret Everything': Toni Morrison Looks Back On Her Personal Life". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. April 20, 2015.

  28 Copy quote

• 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

• We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.

  Toni Morrison

  Media, Fake, News

  Source: wordmag.com

  15 Copy quote

• I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

  Toni Morrison

  Thinking, People, Black

  "Disagree with me - but not because I'm a black woman" by Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2011.

  7 Copy quote

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