Latest Toni Morrison Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The children - I call them children when they're under 18 - are hungry for that love. The drugs are just a sleep that you can't even wake up from, because you might remember what you did when you were there. There's no place for them - there should be a rehabilitation center on every corner, along with McDonald's and the banks. This is serious business. The waiting lists are incredible. I mean, it's terrible. It's really terrible.

  Toni Morrison

  Children, Mean, Sleep

  "Toni Morrison on Love and Writing". Interview with Bill Moyers, billmoyers.com. March 11, 1990.

• Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.

  Toni Morrison

  Definitions, Defined

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know. And I said they don't know nothing. Imagine something. Do you know what it's like to be a Madame in Paris, when you're too old to have any clients. No, you don't. I don't either. Write about it.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, School, College

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

  Toni Morrison

  School, Writing, College

  Interview With Chloe Brooks, theharvardadvocate.com. April 13, 2016.

• 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.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Powerful, Book

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• 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.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Political, Duress

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.

  Toni Morrison

  Political, Seems

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.

  Toni Morrison

  Political, Important, Literature

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.

  Toni Morrison

  Believe, Thinking, Political

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• I'm losing the definition now of politics. I sort of don't know what that is anymore. People say politically correct, I don't know what that means. I know what they think they mean.

  Toni Morrison

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Reader

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• It's bliss when you give up all that stuff that separates you from other human beings. It's hard, but you break down all that stuff.

  Toni Morrison

  Giving Up, Stuff, Bliss

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• There's a contract that I make between myself, the author, and the reader. I have to figure out how to give the reader certain powers of recognition, or his own knowledge, his own feelings, but I provide them, so we're working together.

  Toni Morrison

  Giving, Feelings, Working Together

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• Maybe [I care about language] because I'm an editor, maybe because I'm picky, but it's all we got, don't shrink it. Don't dumb it out, make it little.

  Toni Morrison

  Editors, Dumb, Care

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• 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 ."

  Toni Morrison

  Use, Language, Bigs

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.

  Toni Morrison

  Past, Data, Interesting

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• If we had no language we'd have nothing.

  Toni Morrison

  Language, Ifs

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• 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.

  Toni Morrison

  Country, Hate, Gun

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• Evil is not interesting. What is it, chopping off someone's head? We used to do that as kids, you know, you tear up paper dolls and stuff. I know everyone's done it in the history of the world, but maybe everybody was dumb and they were just looking for something interesting to do. What's really interesting and hard is being good.

  Toni Morrison

  Kids, Evil, Interesting

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

  Toni Morrison

  Literature, Seems

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.

  Toni Morrison

  Moving, Book, Character

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• I think there's data, and then there's information that comes from data, and then there's knowledge that comes from information. And then, after knowledge, there is wisdom. I am interested in how to get from data to wisdom.

  Toni Morrison

  Thinking, Data, Information

  Source: theharvardadvocate.com

• I'm a writer in the world. I translate the confusion that I might feel, the dread that I know I feel, moving towards some other place, moving away from puny language, from all that dread into some other kind of language.

  Toni Morrison

  Moving, Confusion, World

  Source: wordmag.com

• Political doesn't necessarily mean you have an agenda.

  Toni Morrison

  Mean, Political, Agendas

  Source: wordmag.com

• The Administration of the United States is such dread I almost feel paralyzed.

  Toni Morrison

  Administration, United States, Dread

  Source: wordmag.com