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Toni Morrison Quotes

Total quotes: 55
“I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.”
— Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Tagged: Summer, Summer Fruit, Beautiful Summer, Summer Feels
“At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough.”
— Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
Tagged: beauty, Perspective
“You are your best thing.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Tagged: Empowering, Encouragement, motivation
“Something that is loved is never lost.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Tagged: Love, lost, Relationships, marriages
“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”
— Toni Morrison, Words on Words: Quotations about Language and Languages
Tagged: American, white, nationality
“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”
— Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)
Tagged: beauty, Love, Envy, Insecurity
“My feelings are the result of prejudices and convictions like everybody else’s. ”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134
Tagged: Feelings, Prejudice, Convictions
“Race has been a constant arbiter of difference, as have wealth, class, and gender— each of which is about power and the necessity of control.”
— Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others(The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
Tagged: Racism In America, racism, classism
“One purpose of scientific racism is to identify an outsider in order to define one’s self. Another possibility is to maintain (even enjoy) one’s own difference without contempt for the categorized difference of the Othered.”
— Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others(The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
Tagged: Race Bias, Race relations, Race and Ethnicity
“Since no one is born a racist and there is no fetal predisposition to sexism, one learns Othering not by lecture or instruction but by example.”
— Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others(The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
Tagged: Race Bias, Race relations, Race and Ethnicity, Sexism
“When I’m not thinking about a novel, or not actually writing it, it’s not very good; the 21st century is not a very nice place. I need it (writing) to just stay steady, emotionally.”
— Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison dead at 88
Tagged: Writing In The 21st Century
“But although history should not become a straitjacket, which overwhelms and binds, neither should it be forgotten.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134
Tagged: History, straitjacket
“I could read when I was three years old and that’s what I did. At some point, I realized that there was a book I wanted to read, that nobody had written. I really wanted to read it, and the only way I could was to write it.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison on Reality TV, Black Lives Matter, and Meeting Jeff Bezos
Tagged: Reading, precocious, Writing
“Think about it: If you come to this country from Germany, or Russia, or anywhere, you get off the boat, get on the land. But in order to become an American, you have to be white.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison In Conversation | Granta Magazine
Tagged: Germany, Russia, Whiteness
“There are so many opportunities to reveal race in literature— whether one is conscious of it or not. But writing non-colorist literature about black people is a task I have found both liberating and hard.”
— Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others(The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
Tagged: Race Bias, Race relations, Race and Ethnicity, Writing and Expression
“The forbidden word can be provocative. But after a while it becomes monotonous rather than arousing.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134
Tagged: forbidden words, Obscenity, Monotony
“I was saying last night that nobody loves like children, they don’t know if you’re black, white, or poor.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison on Reality TV, Black Lives Matter, and Meeting Jeff Bezos
Tagged: Children, Love, Black, white, rich, poor
“Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.”
— Toni Morrison, Jazz
Tagged: Love, Falling In Love, Relationships, Dating
“How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.”
— Toni Morrison, Paradise (Vintage International)
Tagged: Happiness, Imagination, Goals
“Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I'll tell you where. From that little hog's gut that hangs between your legs. Well, let me tell you something... you will need more than that.”
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Tagged: Men, Power, gender
“The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.”
— Toni Morrison, Sula
Tagged: Evil, Survival, Triumph, Win
“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.”
— Toni Morrison, Dance of Freedom and Desire
Tagged: sister, Siblings, Family
“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, The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)
Tagged: Anger, Awareness, Feelings, emotions
“In other works, such as The Bluest Eye, the consequences of the color fetish are the theme: its severely destructive force.”
— Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others(The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
Tagged: Race Bias, Race relations, Race and Ethnicity
“The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Tagged: Literature Quotes, Lit quotes, Best Books
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
— Toni Morrison, The Handy English Grammar Answer Book
Tagged: Books, Reading, Writing
“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.”
— Toni Morrison, Embodying Beauty: Twentieth-Century American Women Writers' Aesthetics
Tagged: beauty, Photography, Painting, Memories
“Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Tagged: Men, emotions, Feelings, Destruction
“Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly.”
— Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)
Tagged: Love, stupidity, Violence, wicked
“Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.”
— Toni Morrison, Sula
Tagged: meanness, kindness, risks
“Seeing her step so easily from the pantry and emerge looking precisely as she did when she entered, only happier, taught Sula that sex was pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable.”
— Toni Morrison, Sula
Tagged: Sex, Happiness, unremarkable
“Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, for she considered love a serious disability.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Attachment, Co-dependency, Being Alone
“I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.”
— Toni Morrison, 50 Badass Quotes From 50 Badass Women
Tagged: Alpha Female, Power, Woman, Women, Girls, voice, feminism
“Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly.”
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Dating, Flying
“Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? Or would you take it?”
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Tagged: Relationships, Love, Hate
“It was becoming a habit--this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had.”
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Tagged: Past, Future, Concentration
“If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”
— Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Tagged: Happiness, Certainty, Expectations, Experience, Life
“What people outside this country, particularly in Europe, think about this country, what they like about it is generally something that comes out of black culture. It’s jazz. It’s even language. Think about what this country would be like without us. I wouldn’t even visit!”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison In Conversation | Granta Magazine
Tagged: Ethnocentrism, Europe, Jazz, Black Culture
“When somebody like Frederick Douglass wrote a book, he was writing to white people—legitimately—because he wanted them to behave, set him free. That was the audience. Not for me. Tolstoy was not writing for little girls from Ohio. He was writing for Russians, right? I’m writing to, about, and for other black people.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison In Conversation | Granta Magazine
Tagged: Frederick Douglass, Leo Tolstoy, Ohio, russians, Writing, White People
“All Ethiopians are beautiful! There are no ugly Ethiopians.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison In Conversation | Granta Magazine
Tagged: Ethiopians, Beautiful
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