Toni Morrison Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Toni Morrison quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The narrower their lives, the wider their hips. — Toni Morrison

Nobody loved her and she wouldn't have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability. — Toni Morrison

And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing. — Toni Morrison

If I'm here ... you can go anywhere you want. Jump if you want to. 'Cause I'll catch you, girl. I'll catch you 'fore you fall. — Toni Morrison

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it. — Toni Morrison

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do but that won't work. Just wait, it will come. — Toni Morrison

Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing. — Toni Morrison

You your own best thing."
-Paul D. — Toni Morrison

The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference. — 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

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it. — Toni Morrison

I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals. — 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

Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous. — Toni Morrison

The change was adjustment without improvement. — Toni Morrison

If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you. — Toni Morrison

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. — Toni Morrison

Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered color her last years. She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before. — Toni Morrison

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time. — Toni Morrison

A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order. — Toni Morrison

They shoot the white girl first. — Toni Morrison

Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me ... my lonely is mine. — Toni Morrison

From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny. — Toni Morrison

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. — Toni Morrison

I was physically revolted by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and orangeworms hair. — Toni Morrison

You couldn't learn age, but adulthood was there for all. — Toni Morrison

She wants you here as much as I do. For her it is to save her life. For me it is to have one. — Toni Morrison

But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer. — Toni Morrison

Which was what love was: unmotivated respect. — Toni Morrison

And the lives of these old black women were synthesized in their eyes- a puree of tragedy and humor, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy. — Toni Morrison

If you surrender to the wind you can ride it. — Toni Morrison

Tough shit, buddy. Your tough shit... — Toni Morrison

We were two throats and one eye and we had no price. — Toni Morrison

Dominion won by fear and secured by fear was still sweeter than any that could be got another way. — Toni Morrison

Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise. — Toni Morrison

When good people take you in and treat you good, you ought to try to be good back. — Toni Morrison

Long ago she had given up trying to be deft or profound or anything in the company of people she was not interested in, who didn't thrill her. — Toni Morrison

You already alone. If you want more alone, I can knock you into the middle of next week, and leave you there. — Toni Morrison

I don't think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get. — Toni Morrison

When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information. — Toni Morrison

He wondered if there was anyone in the world who liked him. Liked him for himself alone. — Toni Morrison

You revel in the smoke that the words send up. — Toni Morrison

Sleep without the fragrance of her hair next to him was impossible. — Toni Morrison

The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia. — Toni Morrison

Before and since, all her effort was directed not on avoiding pain but on getting through it as quickly as possible. — Toni Morrison

It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you. — Toni Morrison

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art. — Toni Morrison

You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face. — Toni Morrison

Her heart kicked and an itchy burning in her throat made her swallow all her saliva away. She didn't know which way to go. — Toni Morrison

They could not save their friend from the world. She broke. — Toni Morrison

The sad thing was that Pauline did not really care for clothes and makeup. She merely wanted other women to cast favorable glances her way. — Toni Morrison

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people. — Toni Morrison

I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be. — Toni Morrison

She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. — Toni Morrison

A woman could be cobra-thin and starving, but if she had grapefruit boobs and raccoon eyes, she was deliriously happy. — Toni Morrison

I don't do the things other people call "play." — Toni Morrison

Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another. — Toni Morrison

Gather up your loins, daughter. You named Lillian Florence Jones after my mother. A toughter lady never lived. Find your talent and drive it. — Toni Morrison

I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer. — Toni Morrison

When a man angers you, he conquers you. — Toni Morrison

When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world? — Toni Morrison

Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it? — Toni Morrison

You want a real thing?" asked Alice. "I'll tell you a real one. You got anything left to you to love, anything at all, do it. — Toni Morrison

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. — Toni Morrison

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown. In my heart it don't mean a thing. — Toni Morrison

Long ago, before I met her, she twisted her blond hair into dreadlocks and, pretty as she is, the locks add an allure she wouldn't otherwise have. — Toni Morrison

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead. — Toni Morrison

An editor is like a priest or a psychiatrist; if you get the wrong one then you are better off alone. — Toni Morrison

Laughter is more serious than tears. — Toni Morrison

Good for you. More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know. — Toni Morrison

Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing. — Toni Morrison

And then she knew. Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess. — Toni Morrison

I like marriage. The idea. — Toni Morrison

You looking good."
"Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad. — Toni Morrison

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. — Toni Morrison

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. — Toni Morrison

You are your best thing — Toni Morrison

Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder — Toni Morrison

If there is somebody with bluer eyes than mine, then maybe there is somebody with the bluest eyes. The bluest eyes in the whole world. — Toni Morrison

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. — Toni Morrison

Being able to laugh got me through. — Toni Morrison

The sun and the moon shared the horizon in a distant friendship, each unfazed by the other. — Toni Morrison

All important things are hard. — Toni Morrison

Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light. — Toni Morrison

Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself. — Toni Morrison

Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. — Toni Morrison

Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world — Toni Morrison

I refused to explain, or even acknowledge, the "problem" as anything other than an artistic one. — Toni Morrison

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are. — Toni Morrison

The human body is robust. It can gather strength when it's in mortal danger. — Toni Morrison

In a way she was jealous of death. — Toni Morrison

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers. — Toni Morrison

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

We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious. — Toni Morrison

Well, if a man don't HAVE a chance, then he has to TAKE a chance! — Toni Morrison

There was a hint of spring in her sole green eyes, something summery in her complexion, and a rich autumn ripeness in her walk. — Toni Morrison

God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so. — Toni Morrison

In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it. — Toni Morrison

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

Bryn Mawr had done what a four-year dose of liberal education was designed to do: unfit her for eighty percent of the useful work of the world. — Toni Morrison