There 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 MORRISONLove is never any better than the lover.
More Toni Morrison Quotes
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For me the history of the place of black people in this country is so varied, complex and beautiful. And impactful.
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Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn’t have each other you had nothing.
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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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Love is never any better than the lover.
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Today is always here,’ said Sethe. ‘Tomorrow, never.
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Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.
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I didn’t want to speak for black people. I wanted to speak to and to be among. It’s us.
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Navigating a white male world was not threatening. It wasn’t even interesting. I was more interesting than they were.
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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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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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Black people’s music is in a class by itself and always has been.
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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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What a woman. What a life.
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All important things are hard.
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The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.
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He can’t value you more than you value yourself.
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Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
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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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I always know the ending; that’s where I start.
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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.
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If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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I type in one place, but I write all over the house.
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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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When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
TONI MORRISON