I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.
TONI MORRISONI think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.
TONI MORRISONBlack women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn’t have each other you had nothing.
TONI MORRISONLiterature, it seems to me, is wisdom.
TONI MORRISONThere is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.
TONI MORRISONFreeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
TONI MORRISONI get angry about things, then go on and work.
TONI MORRISONMe and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
TONI MORRISONYou don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.
TONI MORRISONBlack people’s music is in a class by itself and always has been.
TONI MORRISONRacism 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 MORRISONShe learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.
TONI MORRISONAll art is knowing when to stop.
TONI MORRISONIt was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
TONI MORRISONAll paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
TONI MORRISONThere 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 MORRISONOppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.
TONI MORRISON