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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.

Toni Morrison

A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.
TONI MORRISON

Dreams Fashion Nightmare
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.
TONI MORRISON

Dreams Inspirational Position Power Thinking
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

Civilization Despair Fear Healing Language Silence Time Writing
Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.
TONI MORRISON

Literature One Liner Wisdom
Writing is really a way of thinking–not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
TONI MORRISON

Disperate Mystery Problem Sweet Thinking Writing
There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.
TONI MORRISON

Art Beginning Civilization Dance Painting
Passion is never enough; neither is skill.
TONI MORRISON

Change Inspirtional Passion Skill
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

Disappear Happen Money People Profit Psychology Racism
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

Circle Cry Loud Sad Sorrow
There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.
TONI MORRISON

Difficult Except Handle Inspirational Refuge
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
TONI MORRISON

Book Excitement Want Writing
Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
TONI MORRISON

Black Lives Matter Crime Live Racism Traget
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
TONI MORRISON

Country White
The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.
TONI MORRISON

Concept Enemy Men World
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.
TONI MORRISON

Ability Imagination Power Strange Writing
I dream a dream that dreams back at me.
TONI MORRISON

Come Back Deep Dreams One Liner

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Toni Morrison Quotes