"What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us."
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Quote collection
Toni Morrison quotes (page 9 of 22)
430 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it."
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"When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information."
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"Let your face speak what's in your heart. When my kids walk in the room my face says I'm glad to see them."
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"Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created."
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"It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being."
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"I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people."
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"Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul."
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"Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God."
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"Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn't even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star."
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"I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?"
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"Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. 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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"Anger... it's a paralyzing emotion... you can't get anything done."
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"Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous."
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"There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning."
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"Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live"
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"For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land."
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"Which was what love was: unmotivated respect."
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"Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder"
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"Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?"
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