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We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

Toni Morrison

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 didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.
TONI MORRISON

Fall In Love Love One Liner Rose
My theory is that the world is a difficult place to live in and distraction is the name of the game.
TONI MORRISON

Difficult Distraction Game Theory World
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
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
I type in one place, but I write all over the house.
TONI MORRISON

House Place Writing
Navigating a white male world was not threatening. It wasn’t even interesting. I was more interesting than they were.
TONI MORRISON

Interesting Male Navigate Threat White
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
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
TONI MORRISON

Book Excitement Want Writing
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
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.
TONI MORRISON

Book Dominant Life Spend Try White Writing
I don’t think one parent can raise a child. I don’t think two parents can raise a child. You really need the whole village.
TONI MORRISON

Children Need Parents Raise Thinking Village
A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.
TONI MORRISON

Gift Life Mankind Necessary Work Writing
Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
TONI MORRISON

Art Beautiful Circumstance Invitation Tragic
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.
TONI MORRISON

Black Lives Matter Country People Power Prevent War

We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

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We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

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Popular Authors

More Toni Morrison Quotes