I always know the ending; that’s where I start.
TONI MORRISONWe mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
More Toni Morrison Quotes
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You are your own stories.
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Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.
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In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work.
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I dream a dream that dreams back at me.
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Passion is never enough; neither is skill.
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When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
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You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
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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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Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
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Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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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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The function of freedom is to free someone else.
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Lonely was much better than alone.
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A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.
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He can’t value you more than you value yourself.
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Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.
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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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The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.
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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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Perhaps that’s what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
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What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?
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From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.
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Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It’s not having no responsibilitie s; it’s choosing the ones you want.
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If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
TONI MORRISON