Quotes from Toni Morrison

It may even be that some of us know what it is like to be actually hated—hated for things we have no control over and cannot change. When this happens, it is some consolation to know that the dislike or hatred is unjustified—that you don't deserve it. And if you have the emotional strength and/or support from family and friends, the damage is reduced or erased. We think of it as the stress (minor or disabling) that is part of life as a human.

Let your face speak what's in your heart.

Let her go?' asked Son, and he smiled a crooked smile. Let go the woman you had been looking for everywhere just because she was difficult? Because she had a temper, energy, ideas of her own and fought back? Let go a woman whose eyebrows were a study, whose face was enough to engage your attention all your life? Let go a woman who was not only a woman but a sound, all the music he had ever wanted to play, a world and a way of being in it? Let that go? 'I can't,' he said. 'I can't.

Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.

It never occurred to us that the Earth itself might have been unyielding

If you can't count they can cheat you. If you can't read they can beat you.

his senses blunted by a permanent awareness of loss

they have the eyes of people who can tell what time it is by the colour of the sky... their eyes do not bite

Anything dead coming back alive hurts

The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love.

Pauline, what would you do if your own brother had a party and didn't invite you?' I said ifn I really wanted to go to that party, I reckoned I'd go anyhow. Never mind what he want. She just sucked her teeth a little and made out like what I said was dumb. All the while I was thinking how dumb she was. Whoever told her that her brother was her friend? Folks can't like folks just 'cause they has the same mama.

When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.

Well, don't let your mouth start nothing that your ass can't stand. When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It'll settle you. I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.

She cannot be lost because no one is looking for her.

She didn't say so, but it suddenly occurred to her that good sex was not knowledge. It was barely information.

All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude." And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. "We was girls together," she said as though explaining something. "O Lord, Sula," she cried, "girl, girl, girlgirlgirl." It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

Except for Adam I don't know anything about love. Adam had no faults, was innocent, pure, easy to love. Had he lived, grown up to have flaws, human failings like deception, foolishness and ignorance, would he be so easy to adore or be even worthy of adoration? What kind of love is it that requires an angel and only an angel for its commitment?

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

124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For

Funny how you lose sight of some things and memory others.

God's generosity is nowhere better seen than in the gift of patience.

She was broken. Not broken up but broken down, down into her separate parts.

How did it feel Bad. Real bad. That's good. That it made you feel bad. I'm glad. How come? It means you're not a liar. You are deep, Thomas. Frank smiled. What you want to be when you grow up? Thomas turned the knob with his left hand and opened the door. A man, he said and left.

That whites not only had no patent on Christianity; they were often its obstacle. That Jesus had been freed from white religion, and he wanted these kids to know that they did not have to beg for respect; it was already in them, and they needed only to display it.