Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
TONI MORRISONTo get to a place where you could love anything you chose – not to need permission for desire – well now that was freedom.
More Toni Morrison Quotes
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We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
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Writing is really a way of thinking–not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
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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.
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But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.
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Something that is loved is never lost.
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There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.
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All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
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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.
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Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
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You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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He wants to put his story next to hers.
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If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.
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A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.
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I dream a dream that dreams back at me.
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If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
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All art is knowing when to stop.
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I always know the ending; that’s where I start.
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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.
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You have to be a little tough, and rely on yourself. And tell people ‘No’.
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It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
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Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
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I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.
TONI MORRISON