Toni Morrison Quotes

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
TONI MORRISON

Country White
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.
TONI MORRISON

Man People Safe Stupidity Violence Weakness Wicked
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
TONI MORRISON

Book Excitement Want Writing
Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don’t feel safe.
TONI MORRISON

Feeling Safe Writing
Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
TONI MORRISON

Couple Future Kindness Past Relationship
The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.
TONI MORRISON

Dance Engagement Equality Open Minded Peace Thinking
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

Difference Hard Work Honesty Life Live Pay Writing
Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
TONI MORRISON

Action Book Change Knowledge Mind Political Reflection
For me the history of the place of black people in this country is so varied, complex and beautiful. And impactful.
TONI MORRISON

Beautiful Black Lives Matter Complex Country History Impact Place
For me the history of the place of black people in this country is so varied, complex and beautiful. And impactful.
TONI MORRISON

Beautiful Black Lives Matter Complex Country History Impact Place
Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.
TONI MORRISON

Love One Liner
Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
TONI MORRISON

Beg Deep Inspirational Love Self Respect
And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.
TONI MORRISON

Cool Love Number Play Self Love Silence Water Wine
I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are.
TONI MORRISON

Choose Decision Discourage Safe Seldom Value Want
It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.
TONI MORRISON

Break Up Broken Heart Fortune Leaving Missing Sheer
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
TONI MORRISON

Allow Design Paradise People
Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn’t have each other you had nothing.
TONI MORRISON

Black Lives Matter Each Other Friendship Women
The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
TONI MORRISON

Couple Friendship Gather Giving Love Pieces
When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.
TONI MORRISON

Children Look Room Walk
Make a difference about something other than yourselves.
TONI MORRISON

Attitude Difference Fashion Motivational Passion Yourself
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
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
He can’t value you more than you value yourself.
TONI MORRISON

Value Women Yourself
The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.
TONI MORRISON

Art Beautiful Politics Time
Liberation means you don’t have to be silenced.
TONI MORRISON

Liberty Silence
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
TONI MORRISON

Deep Forever Inspirational Memories Memory Water
Perhaps that’s what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
TONI MORRISON

Human Life Perhaps Relationship Save

Famous Novelist