Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Novelist, Essayist

Toni Morrison was a celebrated American novelist known for her powerful exploration of race, identity, and love, particularly in her acclaimed work 'Beloved'.

Writing Thinking Children People Men Art
Born
February 18, 1931
Died
August 5, 2019
Quotes
430
Rank
#76

Quote collection

Toni Morrison quotes (page 14 of 22)

430 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Toni Morrison Novelist, Essayist
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"I think being an editor really helped me take other people's notes on my writing. I'd get a note like 'It's too wet' or 'The first couple chapters are good, but then the rest of the pages were so wet that they were completely illegible' or 'Did you dip this in Sprite? This smells like Sprite. Why would you dip your novel in Sprite?' And instead of pushing back, I'd listen. That's an incredibly important skill for a young writer to have."

Couple Writing Thinking
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"When you think of sexual liberation, which women wanted to have or not have children, which is the choice, not a command, and other kinds of things they wanted in their relationships with their husbands, or partners or what have you, became for subsequent generations some license that they themselves feel, that is absolutely demeaning and mean younger and younger and younger."

Children Husband Mean
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"the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)"

Knowing Everything Feelings Dry
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"Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances."

Art Bearing Witness Circumstances
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"My theory is that the world is a difficult place to live in and distraction is the name of the game."

Games Names World
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"Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing."

Real Race Information
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"Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever."

Writing Scared Knows
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"In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it."

Ohio People World
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"I know there's some poetry that sort of sounds like daisies, but most of the good poetry is also [political], you can feel the heartbeat; it's about some situation that concerns human beings under duress. It's suggesting a solution, or just acknowledging that [the situation] exists. Art does that."

Art Political Duress
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"What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something."

Sorry Grief Thinking
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"There are some very powerful contributions to knowledge in the scientific world or the legal world, but art is singular. That's why every dictator gets rid of the artists first. They burn the books and execute the artists first. Then they get on with whatever else they're interested in. Art might do something. It's dangerous."

Art Powerful Book
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"This word "LOVE" - discredited, "clicheed" - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human."

And Love Care Language
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"The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic."

Hurt Everyday Scream
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"He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers. ‘Me? Me?"

Hands Faces Fingers
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"My metaphor is that evil always has a top hat and a cape, and goodness is over there in the corner. For me it's just too easy, if you hate your country or your wife, so you kill them. You can't think through that, you can't feel through that, you can't do the work. And now we have guns. Solution? I don't think so."

Country Hate Gun
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"The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time."

Sweat Language Provocative
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"I have difficulties with contemporary language. Big difficulties. I counted, you know, something like 160 words have disappeared from the English language because of the use of the word "like." "I'm like, he's like" - not "thought," not "as if .""

Use Language Bigs
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"Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, "goodbye" would break me to pieces. Ain't that sweet. "So long," she murmured from the far side of the trees."

Goodbye Sweet Thinking
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