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Toni Morrison
120 quotes
“Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bluest Eye (1969) First lines
“There is really nothing more to say — except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bluest Eye (1969)
“Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Commencement address at Barnard College (May 1979) as quoted in Ms. magazine (September 1979)
“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tar Baby (1981)
“Was there anything so loathsome as a wilfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tar Baby (1981)
“Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Morrison said this in her talk at the annual meeting of the Ohio Arts Council in Cincinnati in September 1981. Variants, unsourced:
“Black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Black Women Writers at Work (1983) by Claudia Tate
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Grace Notes (1989) by Rita Dove
“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Guardian (29 January 1992)
“The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Black Matters" in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)
“I was thrilled that my mother is still alive and can share this with me. And I can claim representation in so many areas. I'm a Midwesterner, and everyone in Ohio is excited. I'm also a New Yorker, and a New Jerseyan, and an American, plus I'm an African-American, and a woman. I know it seems like I'm spreading like algae when I put it this way, but I'd like to think of the prize being distributed to these regions and nations and races.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On receiving the Nobel Prize, in The New York Times (8 October 1993)
“I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, "You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there." So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in the New York Times Magazine (11 September 1994).
“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in the New York Times Magazine (11 September 1994).
“Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Woman to Woman (1994) by Julia Gilden and Mark Riedman
“white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About Bill Clinton. Comment, The New Yorker, 5 October 1998.
“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paradise (1998) First lines
“You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On British mystery writer Ruth Rendell, The New York Times (6 October 2005)
“You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Home (novella), p. 126 (2012)
“I always know the ending; that's where I start.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Every Day a Word Surprises Me & Other Quotes by Writers by Phaidon (2018) with citation
“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race’. This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with the Daily Telegraph, August 2019
“In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing. . . . Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running — from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anything dead coming back to life hurts.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The picture is still there and what's more, if you go there — you who never was there — if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over — over and done with — it's going to always be there waiting for you.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were not holding hands, but their shadows were. Sethe looked to her left and all three of them were gliding over the dust holding hands. Maybe he was right. A life.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's a tree, Lu. A chokecherry tree. See, here's the trunk — it's red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here's the parting for the branches. You got a mighty lot of branches. Leaves, too, look like, and dern if these ain't blossoms. Tiny little cherry blossoms, just as white. Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom. What God have in mind, I wonder.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They stayed that way for a while because neither Denver nor Sethe knew how not to: how to stop and not love the look or feel of the lips that kept on kissing.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had been so close, then closer. And it was so much better than the anger that ruled when Sethe did or thought anything that excluded herself. She could bear the hours — nine or ten of them each day but one — when Sethe was gone. Bear even the nights when she was close but out of sight, behind walls and doors lying next to him. But now — even the daylight time that Beloved had counted on, disciplined herself to be content with, was being reduced, divided by Sethe's willingness to pay attention to other things. Him mostly.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The return of Denver's hearing, cut off by an answer she could not bear to hear, cut on by the sound of her dead sister trying to climb the stair, signaled another shift in the fortunes of the people of 124. From then on, the presence was full of spite. Instead of sighs and accidents there was pointed and deliberate abuse.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Except for an occasional request for color she said practically nothing — until the afternoon of the last day of her life when she got out of bed, skipped slowly to the door of the keeping room and announced to Sethe and Denver the lesson se had learned from her sixty years a slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople. "They don't know when to stop," she said, and returned to her bed, pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. Making them think the next sunrise would be worth it; that another stroke of time would do it at last. Only when she was dead would they be safe. The successful ones — the ones who had been there enough years to have maimed, mutilated, maybe even buried her — kept watch over the others who were still in her cock-teasing hug, caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was noon, quite light outside; inside it is not. A few cuts of sun break through the roof and walls but once there they are too weak to shift for themselves. Darkness is stronger and swallows them like minnows.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Darkness or not, she moves rapidly around, reaching, touching cobwebs, cheese, slating shelves, the pallet interfering with each step. If she trumbles, she is not aware of it because she does not know where her body stops, which part of her is an arm, a foot or a knee. She feels like an ice cake torn away from the solid surface of the stream, floating on darkness, thick and crashing against the edges of things around it. Breakable, meltable and cold.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He knew what she was thinking and even though she was wrong — he was not leaving her, wouldn't ever — the thing he had in mind to tell her was going to be worse. So, when he saw the diminished expectation in her eyes, the melancholy without blame, he could not say it. He could not say to this woman who did not squint in the wind, "I am not a man.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now he was grateful a second time. He felt as though he had been plucked from the face of a cliff and put down on sure ground. In Sethe's bed he knew he could put up with two crazy girls — as long as Sethe made her wishes known. Stretched out to his full length, watching snowflakes stream past the window over his feet, it was easy to dismiss the doubts that took him to the alley behind the restaurant: his expectations for himself were high, too high. What he might call cowardice other people called common sense.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unless carefree, motherlove was a killer.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The couple upstairs, united, didn't hear a sound, but below them, outside, all around 124 the snow went on and on and on. Piling itself, burying itself. Higher. Deeper.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source