A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.
TONI MORRISONI didn’t want to speak for black people. I wanted to speak to and to be among. It’s us.
More Toni Morrison Quotes
-
-
You are your best thing.
TONI MORRISON -
I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.
TONI MORRISON -
You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
TONI MORRISON -
Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
TONI MORRISON -
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 -
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 -
She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.
TONI MORRISON -
Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.
TONI MORRISON -
Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
TONI MORRISON -
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 -
You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.
TONI MORRISON -
Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.
TONI MORRISON -
And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.
TONI MORRISON -
For me the history of the place of black people in this country is so varied, complex and beautiful. And impactful.
TONI MORRISON -
You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
TONI MORRISON