"New York is the last true city."
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Quote collection
Toni Morrison quotes (page 6 of 22)
430 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean."
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"In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous."
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"Love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize."
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"Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world's resources."
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"She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still."
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"Laughter is more serious than tears."
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"I don't think one parent can raise a child. I don't think two parents can raise a child. You really need the whole village."
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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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"I always know the ending; that's where I start."
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"Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe."
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"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."
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"Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing."
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"In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended."
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"I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway."
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"If you take racism away from certain people - I mean, vitriolic racism as well as the sort of social racist - if you take that away, they may have to face something really terrible, misery, self-misery, and deep pain about who they are."
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"What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?"
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"I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer."
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"In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book -- leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity."
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"Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war."
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