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Toni Morrison

120 quotes

“What for? What does a sixty-odd-year-old slavewoman who walks like a three-legged dog need freedom for? And when she stepped foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn’t; that Halle, who had never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me?”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Something's the matter. What's the matter? What's the matter? She asked herself. She didn't know what she looked like and was not curious. But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, "These hands belong to me. These my hands." Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? This pounding thing? She felt like a fool and began to laugh out loud.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She smiled then, at the memory of it. The smile broke in two and became a sudden suck of air, but she did not shudder of close her eyes. She wheeled.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you choose — not to need permission for desire — well now, that was freedom.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You got two feet, Sethe, not four...”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With that, she gathered her blanket around her elbows and ascended the lily-white stairs like a bride. Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter staars seemed permanent.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers — not the defined.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again. I don't know what it is, I don't know who it is, but maybe there is something else terrible enough to make her do it again. I need to know what that thing might be, but I don't want to. Whatever it is, it comes from outside this house, outside the yard, and it can come right on in the yard if it wants to. So I never leave this house and I watch over the yard, so it can't happen again and my mother won't have to kill me too.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am Beloved and she is mine. I see her take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I see the dark face that is going to smile at me it is my dark face that is going to smile at me the iron circle is around our neck she does not have sharp earrings in her ears or a round basket she goes in the water with my face.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not dead I sit the sun closes my eyes when I open them I see the face I lost Sethe's is the face that left me Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me doing it at last a hot thing now we can join.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Garner called and announced them men — but only on Sweet Home, and by his leave. Was he naming what he saw or creating what he did not?”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is sprinkling now. A teasing August rain that raises expectations it cannot fill.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tell me something, Stamp." Paul D's eyes were rheumy. "Tell me this one thing. How much is a nigger supposed to take? Tell me. How much?”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best things she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing — the part of her that was clean.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What's fair ain't necessarily true.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human life is holy, all of it.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is not a story to pass on.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even if the room they rented was smaller than the heifer’s stall and darker than a morning privy, they stayed to look at their number, hear themselves in an audience, feel themselves moving down the street among hundreds of others who moved the way they did, and who, when they spoke, regardless of the accent, treated language like the same intricate, malleable toy designed for their play.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Born lost. Take over the world and still lost.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing like other folks' sin for distraction.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that one of the principal ways in which we acquire, hold, and digest information, is via narrative — so I hope you will understand when the remarks I make begin with the first sentence of our childhood — that we all remember — the phrase: "Once upon a time.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course I'm a black writer.... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Newsweek (30 March 1981)
“I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Newsweek (30 March 1981)
“Anger... it's a paralyzing emotion... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers — and I need clarity, in order to write — and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever. I can feel melancholy, and I can feel full of regret, but anger is something that is useful to the people who watch it... it's not useful to me.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Don Swaim (1987)
“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 (1931–2019) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Don Swaim (1987)
“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 (1931–2019) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Don Swaim (1987)
“I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now. Novels are always inquiries for me. (1998)”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books. An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status — that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me. And the benefits they bring with them, in spite of the fact that they are either dismissed or upbraided — something about their presence is constructive in the long run. (2003)”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion — because hatred is involved in it, too. I thought if I removed the word from nearly every other place in the manuscript, it could become an earned word. If I could give the word, in my very modest way, its girth and its meaning and its terrible price and its clarity at the moment when that is all there is time for, then the title does work for me.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the title of her book Love (2003), in O, The Oprah Magazine (November 2003)
“I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: «Toni Morrison: 'I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman'» by Oliver Laughland, The Guardian (20 April 2015)
“Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city... Numbers here constitute an address, a thrilling enough prospect for slaves who had owned nothing, least of all an address. And although the numbers, unlike words, can have no modifiers, I give these an adjective — spiteful… A few words have to be read before it is clear that 124 refers to a house … and a few more have to be read to discover why it is spiteful, or rather the source of the spite. By then it is clear, if not at once, that something is beyond control, but is not beyond understanding since it is not beyond accommodation by both the "women" and the "children." The fully realized presence of the haunting is both a major incumbent of the narrative and sleight of hand. One of its purposes is to keep the reader preoccupied with the nature of the incredible spirit world while being supplied a controlled diet of the incredible political world. … Here I wanted the compelling confusion of being there as they (the characters) are; suddenly, without comfort or succor from the "author," with only imagination, intelligence, and necessity available for the journey. …. No compound of houses, no neighborhood, no sculpture, no paint, no time, especially no time because memory, pre-historic memory, has no time. There is just a little music, each other and the urgency of what is at stake. Which is all they had. For that work, the work of language is to get out of the way.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature" in Michigan Quarterly Review 28, no. 1 (Winter 1989)
“We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Burn This Book, p. 2 (2009)
“The mirror by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his — his own — that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one can blame the conqueror for writing history the way he sees it, and certainly not for digesting human events and discovering their patterns according to his own point of view. But it must be admitted … that conventional history supports and complements a very grave and almost pristine ignorance. Because the very nature of history is to make large distinctions, it encourages the intellect, therefore, to forgo finer ones. Because historians must deal with rice in bulk, rather than grain-by-grain, heavy dependence on the conventions of that discipline lead us to do likewise in human relationships. If such history continues to be the major informer of our sensibilities, we will remain functionally unintelligent. Because, after all, it is the ability to make distinctions — and the smaller the distinctions made, the higher the intellect that makes them — by which we judge intellect.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would seem that to continue to see race of people, any race of people as one single personality is an ignorance of gothic proportions, an ignorance so vast, so public, and perception so blind and so blunted, imagination so bleak that no nuance, no subtlety, no difference among them can be ascertained. Which may explain in part why in 1975 we are left with pretty much the same mental equipment we had in 1775 — the equipment that hadn’t the curiosity to record the names of human beings in a ship’s manifest, hasn’t the curiosity to examine the medieval minds of scientific racists, theologic [sic] racists, historical racists, literary racists; an intelligence that is so crippled that it could in all seriousness ask W.E.B. Du Bois, in 1905, in pursuit of some study as a White professor from Clark University did, whether colored people shed tears.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the artist one can only say, not to be confused, — not to be confused. You don’t waste your energy fighting the fever; you must only fight the disease. And the disease is not racism. It is greed and the struggle for power. And I urge you to be careful. For there is a deadly prison: the prison that is erected when one spends one’s life fighting phantoms, concentrating on myths, and explaining over and over to the conqueror your language, your lifestyle, your history, your habits. And you don’t have to do it anymore. You can go ahead and talk straight to me. To avoid the prison of reacting to racism is a problem of the very first order. Where the mind dwells on changing the minds of racists is a very dank place. Where the spirit hangs limp in silk cords of the racial apologists who want soft and delicate treatment for the poor victims is a very dim place. And where the will that you allow to be eroded day by day, day by day, by consistent assaults from racists, then the will just settles into a little tiny heap of sand, and you just have a second-rate existence, jammed with second-hand ideas.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source