Toni Morrison quote: "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."

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

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became tr...
TONI MORRISON

When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
TONI MORRISON

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
TONI MORRISON

If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it
TONI MORRISON

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to ...
TONI MORRISON

In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Lov...
TONI MORRISON

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman w...
TONI MORRISON

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
TONI MORRISON

Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling th...
TONI MORRISON

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
TONI MORRISON

Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
TONI MORRISON

Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an in...
TONI MORRISON

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
TONI MORRISON

When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
TONI MORRISON

How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like for...
TONI MORRISON

There is really nothing more to say except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take ...
TONI MORRISON

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the f...
TONI MORRISON

You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn't want...
TONI MORRISON

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.
TONI MORRISON

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
TONI MORRISON

He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion-‘
‘I don’t, ‘ She said. ‘I have m...
TONI MORRISON

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the...
TONI MORRISON

Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by...
TONI MORRISON

You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you r...
TONI MORRISON

Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.
TONI MORRISON

I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very ...
TONI MORRISON

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to...
TONI MORRISON

I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] ...
TONI MORRISON

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
TONI MORRISON

All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in. TONI MORRISON

I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contemp...
TONI MORRISON

You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your e...
TONI MORRISON

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets e...
TONI MORRISON

Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destr...
TONI MORRISON

Bit by bit . . . she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of tha...
TONI MORRISON

Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in...
TONI MORRISON

Good for you. More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.
TONI MORRISON

Rainwater held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe.
TONI MORRISON

You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His ...
TONI MORRISON

If I did I didn't know it. What's it like, velvet?'

'Well, Lu, velvet is like the world w...
TONI MORRISON

Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon.
TONI MORRISON

She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing some...
TONI MORRISON

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; ...
TONI MORRISON

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.
TONI MORRISON

She is a friend of my mind... The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the r...
TONI MORRISON

Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wa...
TONI MORRISON

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have ...
TONI MORRISON

Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
TONI MORRISON

It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.
TONI MORRISON

Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder
TONI MORRISON

He wants to put his story next to hers.
TONI MORRISON

You are your best thing
TONI MORRISON

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
TONI MORRISON

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.
TONI MORRISON

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or eve...
TONI MORRISON

And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream bo...
TONI MORRISON

And the City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its...
TONI MORRISON

Hospitality is gold in this City; you have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and defens...
TONI MORRISON

It's nice when grown people whisper to each other under the covers. Their ecstasy is more a leaf-sig...
TONI MORRISON

I’m crazy about this City.

Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half....
TONI MORRISON

the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is i...
TONI MORRISON

Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets ...
TONI MORRISON

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white pe...
TONI MORRISON

For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this cou...
TONI MORRISON

The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, d...
TONI MORRISON

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back ...
TONI MORRISON

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard ...
TONI MORRISON

Long ago, before I met her, she twisted her blond hair into dreadlocks and, pretty as she is, the lo...
TONI MORRISON

It's been mentioned or suggested that Paradise will not be well studied, because it's about ...
TONI MORRISON

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.
TONI MORRISON

Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal ...
TONI MORRISON

Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whethe...
TONI MORRISON

Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.
TONI MORRISON

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was no...
TONI MORRISON

The desire, let alone the gesture,to meet her needs was good enough to loft her spirits to the place...
TONI MORRISON

Her heart kicked and an itchy burning in her throat made her swallow all her saliva away. She didn't...
TONI MORRISON

Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was [...] ...
TONI MORRISON

Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disabil...
TONI MORRISON

No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it wa...
TONI MORRISON

It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "anything dead coming back to life hurts.
TONI MORRISON

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back ...
TONI MORRISON

Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of ...
TONI MORRISON

It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles...
TONI MORRISON

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just rem...
TONI MORRISON

(Love) is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerf...
TONI MORRISON

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
TONI MORRISON

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
TONI MORRISON

Bit by bit . . . she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that...
TONI MORRISON

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
TONI MORRISON

The loneliest woman in the world is the woman without a close woman friend
TONI MORRISON

(Love) is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerf...
TONI MORRISON

Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me
TONI MORRISON

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to ...
TONI MORRISON

Bryn Mawr had done what a four-year dose of liberal education was designed to do: unfit her for eigh...
TONI MORRISON

Most of our lives are spent in little towns, little towns all throughout the country. That's where w...
TONI MORRISON

There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take ...
TONI MORRISON

As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer
TONI MORRISON

And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.
TONI MORRISON

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. ...
TONI MORRISON

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to wri...
TONI MORRISON

Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history conn...
TONI MORRISON

florens would sigh then, her head on lina's shoulder and when sleep came the little girl's smiel lin...
TONI MORRISON

What is the nature of Othering's comfort, its allure, its power (social, psychological, or economica...
TONI MORRISON

Rebuffed from his fine feelings, Milkman matched her cold tone. "You loved those white folks that mu...
TONI MORRISON

Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has...
TONI MORRISON

All of us - all who knew her - felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beaut...
TONI MORRISON

guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our o...
TONI MORRISON

To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; ...
TONI MORRISON

I have my own list of objections that I can peruse at my leisure, not least of which is an almost co...
TONI MORRISON

No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that ...
TONI MORRISON

For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must ...
TONI MORRISON

It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a hum...
TONI MORRISON

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.
TONI MORRISON

Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green...
TONI MORRISON

He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe....
TONI MORRISON

But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.
TONI MORRISON

This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. ...
TONI MORRISON

I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one ...
TONI MORRISON

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the s...
TONI MORRISON

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint...
TONI MORRISON

The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fr...
TONI MORRISON

In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction tha...
TONI MORRISON

But it wasn't all bad. Sometimes things wasn't all bad. He used to come home easing into bed sometim...
TONI MORRISON

Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.
TONI MORRISON

Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other ti...
TONI MORRISON

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy...
TONI MORRISON

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you ca...
TONI MORRISON

Jump, if you want to, ‘cause I’ll catch you, girl. I’ll catch you “fore you fall. Go as far ...
TONI MORRISON

You your best thing, Sethe. You are.
TONI MORRISON

you got two feet, Sethe, not four." he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; tactles...
TONI MORRISON

In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the...
TONI MORRISON

Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.
TONI MORRISON

You looking good."
"Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.
TONI MORRISON

It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire an...
TONI MORRISON

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back ...
TONI MORRISON

When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could ma...
TONI MORRISON

Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dange...
TONI MORRISON

Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.'

Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being ali...
TONI MORRISON

Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never.
TONI MORRISON

They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lov...
TONI MORRISON

Something that is loved is never lost.
TONI MORRISON

Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If ...
TONI MORRISON

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away
TONI MORRISON

There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this mo...
TONI MORRISON

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for
life. If you write for a livi...
TONI MORRISON

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, o...
TONI MORRISON

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the m...
TONI MORRISON

Sleep without the fragrance of her hair next to him was impossible.
TONI MORRISON

Listen, baby, people do funny things. Specially us. The cards are stacked against us and just trying...
TONI MORRISON

See? See what you can do? Never mind you can’t tell one letter from another, never mind you born a...
TONI MORRISON

Her passions were narrow but deep.
TONI MORRISON

God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who ga...
TONI MORRISON

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we w...
TONI MORRISON

What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The...
TONI MORRISON

The human body is robust. It can gather strength when it's in mortal danger.
TONI MORRISON

Every sentence, every word, was new to them and they listened to what he said like bright-eyed raven...
TONI MORRISON

We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
TONI MORRISON

...the change was adjustment without improvement.
TONI MORRISON

Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complic...
TONI MORRISON

We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don’t just say I’m grown and ought to know. I don�...
TONI MORRISON

Being in the desert was brilliant and it was hard.
TONI COLLETTE

I'm a businesswoman who's serious about her money. I want an empire.
TONI BRAXTON

How do you know which path you should take? Take one and it will tell you if you've chosen wisely. I...
TONI SORENSON

Some of the most memorable paths I've taken have been detours.
TONI SORENSON

Treasures are not found where many feet have trampled. They are found along the paths that no one el...
TONI SORENSON

All paths eventually lead home.
TONI SORENSON

It may seem that you are on the path alone, but the light that guides you is coming from somewhere. ...
TONI SORENSON

How do you choose your paths? Who says you do? Sometimes the path chooses you.
TONI SORENSON

Nature makes the best paths that leads to the best places.
TONI SORENSON

..And i can't get you out of my mind,
God knows how hard I've tried
TONI BRAXTON

I think that the Japanese culture is one of the very few cultures left that is its own entity. They&...
TONI COLLETTE

The better you know yourself, the better your relationship with the rest of the world.
TONI COLLETTE

Actually, the year 2000 is our 25th anniversary of doing Captain & Tennille. I can't believe...
TONI TENNILLE

I love holidays. It's such a wonderful time for the whole family to be together and not have to ...
TONI COLLETTE

I think that beauty can injure you to death. It can cause an injury that can never be cured. Or it c...
TONI SERVILLO

My fears teach me courage. My weaknesses coach me to strength. My scars remind me not to make the sa...
TONI SORENSON

I can't record in the morning because I sound like Barry White.
TONI BRAXTON

I grew up watching a lot of American television and so the American sound has been in my psyche some...
TONI COLLETTE

Grammys, American Music Awards, successful albums, I'd pick my kids any day over any of it.
TONI BRAXTON

Until you believe you can do it, it's going to be difficult to convince anyone else you can do it.
TONI SORENSON

Weight loss doesn't begin in the gym with a dumb bell; it starts in your head with a decision.
TONI SORENSON

I'm not a diva. I'm a tadpole trying to be a frog.
TONI BRAXTON

I don't mind where I work, it's really nice to be able to travel around and taste the flavou...
TONI COLLETTE

The secret is not following the right path, it's following that right path to the end. Don't quit, m...
TONI SORENSON

The biggest surprise to people is that I sang background on Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' albu...
TONI TENNILLE

Over the last three years I've been broke, dumped, and pimped.
TONI BRAXTON

People are so fearful about opening themselves up. All you want to do is to be able to connect with ...
TONI COLLETTE

Take a discovery walk today to find what's missing in your life. There's peace in the whisper of the...
TONI SORENSON

Any woman can be a siren one minute and in pigtails the next. I am a very complex person with more t...
TONI TENNILLE

It's the largest tropical storm we've ever had, ... It's engulfed the entire state. This is going to...
TONI JENNINGS

I've never had a game plan. It's just if something comes along and it feels right in the mom...
TONI COLLETTE

After 'Muriel's Wedding,' I first went to America, and I was sent all these scripts abou...
TONI COLLETTE

Cameron and I actually do wear the same size, ... It made it very easy for the wardrobe department.
TONI COLLETTE

Hello, sex on legs
TONI ALEO

Discussions are ongoing, but we are not in a position to report any new developments.
TONI SIMONETTI

I believe in nurturing the inner world.
TONI COLLETTE

I just want to find some inner peace, and I think I'm getting there, slowly but surely.
TONI COLLETTE

Sylvia Day delivers readers to a fantasy world as unique as it is erotic! Ms. Day is an up-and-comin...
TONI BLAKE

Independent films have a certain freedom about them - there isn't so much at stake in terms of m...
TONI COLLETTE

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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Toni Morrison

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.

Toni Morrison

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