If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
TONI MORRISONA friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
More Toni Morrison Quotes
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I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe.
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All important things are hard.
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He wants to put his story next to hers.
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Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
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Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
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All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
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Black people’s music is in a class by itself and always has been.
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Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
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To get to a place where you could love anything you chose – not to need permission for desire – well now that was freedom.
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A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.
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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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Misery don’t call ahead. That’s why you have to stay awake – otherwise it just walks on in your door.
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You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.
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The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
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I don’t think one parent can raise a child. I don’t think two parents can raise a child. You really need the whole village.
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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.
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What a woman. What a life.
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It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.
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I’ve spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.
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There’s a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises. If you write for life, you’ll work hard; you’ll do what’s honest, not what pays.
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You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
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It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
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Make a difference about something other than yourselves.
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Writing is really a way of thinking–not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
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