"I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies."
"She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love."
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Source: Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993
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More quotes by Toni Morrison
"If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down."
"The function of freedom is to free someone else."
"Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love."
"There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism."
"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."