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 MORRISONThere is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.
More Toni Morrison Quotes
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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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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.
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Something that is loved is never lost.
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Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
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You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
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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.
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Today is always here,’ said Sethe. ‘Tomorrow, never.
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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.
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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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Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
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Lonely was much better than alone.
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In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work.
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We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
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You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.
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All important things are hard.
TONI MORRISON