"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it."
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Quote collection
Toni Morrison quotes (page 5 of 22)
430 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself."
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"I get angry about things, then go on and work."
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"And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow."
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"I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons."
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"I didn't fall in love, I rose in it."
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"One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power."
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"We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media."
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"I know what every colored woman in this country is doing... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world."
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"Let your face speak what's in your heart."
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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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"From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art."
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"Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?"
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"Black people's music is in a class by itself and always has been. There's nothing like it. The reason for that is because it was not tampered with by white people. It was not on the media. It was not anywhere except where black people were. And it is one of the art forms in which black people decided what is good in it. Nobody told them. What surfaced and what floated to the top, were the giants and the best."
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"People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever."
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"Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never."
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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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"Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission."
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"Being able to laugh got me through."
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"I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it."
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