Toni Morrison Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• Two parents can't raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community - everybody - to raise a child. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for white people or for black people. Why are we hanging onto it, I don't know. It isolates people into little units - people need a larger unit.

  Toni Morrison

  Family, Children, Two

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.260, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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.

  Toni Morrison

  Reality, Lovely, Awareness

  Toni Morrison (2017). “Race: Vintage Minis”, p.33, Random House

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• The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.

  Toni Morrison

  Patriotic, Differences, Humane

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• Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

  Toni Morrison

  Country, War, Class

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.255, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Being able to laugh got me through.

  Toni Morrison

  Laughing, Able, Civil Rights

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• Passion is never enough; neither is skill.

  Toni Morrison

  Passion, Skills, Enough

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

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• Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.

  Toni Morrison

  Responsibility, Leader, Taking Responsibility

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.259, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.

  Toni Morrison

  Mom, Daughter, Literature

  "Beloved". Book by Toni Morrison, September 1987.

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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?

  Toni Morrison

  Order, Imagination, Silence

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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.

  Toni Morrison

  Differences, Sublime, Meaning Of Life

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

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• Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.

  Toni Morrison

  Definitions, Defined

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it will come.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Waiting, Trying

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• I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

  Toni Morrison

  Summer, Dust, Sky

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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.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Discipline, Imagination

  Sula (1973)

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• 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

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• The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did.

  Toni Morrison

  Finishing It, Finishing, Looks

  Toni Morrison, Carolyn C. Denard (2008). “What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction”, p.79, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

  Toni Morrison

  Gratitude, Hurt, Beer

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

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• You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving - thats what's useful for art.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Needs, Looks

  Interview with Don Swaim, 1987.

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• Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.

  Toni Morrison

  Real, Race, Information

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• Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It's more provocative to me and more stimulating to me.

  Toni Morrison

  Evil, Complicated, Boring

  Source: wordmag.com

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• Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Scared, Knows

  "Toni Morrison cancels memoir contract due to 'not interesting' life" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2012.

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• For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Order, Restoration

  Interview with Don Swaim, 1987.

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• I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.

  Toni Morrison

  Broken Heart, Running, Men

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.260, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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.

  Toni Morrison

  Love You, Bad Word, Humans

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

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• And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

  Toni Morrison

  Dream, Book, Wine

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