List of Toni Morrison Quotes

When I Went Into The Publishing Industry, Many Women Talked About The Difficulty They Had In Persuading Their Families To Let Them Go To College. They Educated The Boys, And The Girls Had To Struggle.

Womanists Is What Black Feminists Used To Call Themselves. Very Much So. They Were Not The Same Thing. And Also The Relationship With Men. Historically, Black Women Have Always Sheltered Their Men Because They Were Out There, And They Were The Ones That Were Most Likely To Be Killed.

What's Interesting About Writing Is The Invention, The Creative Thing. Writing About Myself Is A Yawn.

The Seeds Of Destruction Lie In The Definition Of "chosen-ness" And Can Easily Blossom Into Bigotry. It's Not Inevitable But It Needs Constant Care To Avoid.

I Think One Of The Reasons I'm So Thrilled With Writing Is Because It Is An Act Of Reading For Me At The Same Time, Which Is Why My Revisions Are So Sustained.

I Feel Like Today We Always Glorify The Young, Just-plucked-from-college Writer. But It's Much Harder To Start Writing Later, In Middle Age, Struggling On A Book Around A Full-time Job And Family.

One Of The Monstrous Things That Slavery In This Country Caused Was The Breakup Of Families. I Mean, Physical Labor, Horrible; Beatings, Horrible; Lynching Death, All Of That, Horrible. But The Living Life Of A Parent Who, A, Has No Control Over What Happens To Your Children, None. They Don't Belong To You. You May Not Even Nurse Them. They May Be Shipped Off Somewhere, As In "beloved" The Mother Was, To Be Nursed By Somebody Who Was Not Able To Work In The Fields And Was A Wet Nurse.

Home Is Memory, Home Is Your History, Home Is Where You Work. Some People Want To Abandon It And Become Truly Local. But The Questions Are All There.

This Is Really Skin Privilege, The Ranking Of Color In Terms Of Its Closeness To White People Or White-skinned People And Its Devaluation According To How Dark One Is And The Impact That Has On People Who Are Dedicated To The Privileges Of Certain Levels Of Skin Color.

I Began To Realize That This Idea Of The Lighter The Better And The Darker The Worse Was Really - Had An Impact On Sororities, On Friendships, On All Sorts Of Things, And It Was Stunning To Me.

It Was My Father Who Could Do No Wrong. So I Didn't Think Of It As, Oh, Look, My Father's A Violent Man.

In My Mother's Church, Everybody Read The Bible And It Was Mostly About Music. My Mother Had The Most Beautiful Voice I Have Ever Heard In My Life. She Could Sing Anything - Classical, Jazz, Blues, Opera. And People Came From Long Distances To That Little Church She Went To - African Methodist Episcopal, The Ame Church She Belonged To - Just Hear Her.

I Don't Work. I Keep Telling People I'm Unemployed. And I Don't Wash Dishes, And I Don't Wash Clothes, And I Don't Clean My House. Somebody Else Does That.

I Couldn't Bear To Have People Mispronounce My Name. But The Person I Was Was This Person Who Was Called Chloe.

I Sang "o Holy Night" In A School Choir. My Mother Came And Listened To Me And Complimented Me. So That Was The High Point. I Cannot Sing A Note.

Sometimes The Names Were Humiliating, Deliberately So. Somebody Would Pick Out Your Flaw. If You Were Little, They Would Call You Shorty. And If You Were Angry, They Would Call You The Devil.

I Don't Think I Knew Any Of My Father's Friends - Male Friends - By Their Real Names. I Remember Them Only By Their Nicknames.

Usually I Try To Be There By Six. Everything Has Been Taken Off The Walls So That There's Nothing To Arrest My Sight. On The Bed I Have Roget's Thesaurus, A Dictionary, A Bible, And A Deck Of Playing Cards.

All She Saw, Down In The Cellar Well Beneath The Stoop, Was A Light Yellow Feather With A Tip Of Green. And She Had Never Named Him. Had Called Him "my Parrot" All These Years. "my Parrot." "love You. "love You." Did The Dogs Get Him? Or Did He Get The Message - That She Said, "my Parrot" And He Said, "love You," And She Had Never Said It Back Or Even Taken The Trouble To Name Him - And Manage Somehow To Fly Away On Wings That Had Not Soared For Six Years.

Pain. I Seem To Have An Affection, A Kind Of Sweettooth For It. Bolts Of Lightning, Little Rivulets Of Thunder. And I The Eye Of The Storm.

Lonely, Ain't It? Yes, But My Lonely Is Mine. Now Your Lonely Is Somebody Else's. Made By Somebody Else And Handed To You. Ain't That Something? A Secondhand Lonely.

There Is A Certain Kind Of Peace That Is Not Merely The Absence Of War. It Is Larger Than That. The Peace I Am Thinking Of Is Not At The Mercy Of History's Rule, Nor Is It A Passive Surrender To The Status Quo. The Peace I Am Thinking Of Is The Dance Of An Open Mind When It Engages Another Equally Open One -- An Activity That Occurs Most Naturally, Most Often In The Reading/writing World We Live In. Accessible As It Is, This Particular Kind Of Peace Warrants Vigilance.

I Want To Feel What I Feel. What's Mine. Even If It's Not Happiness, Whatever That Means. Because You're All You've Got.

Movements Toward Freedom And The Self-respect That Comes From Something Other Than What People Think Is Their Most Important Feature.