Quotes from Toni Morrison

Our past is bleak. Our future dim. But I am not reasonable. A reasonable man adjusts to his environment. And unreasonable man does not. All progress, therefore, depends on the unreasonable man. I prefer not to adjust to my environment. I refuse the prison of "I" and choose the open spaces of "we.

belleza no era simplemente algo que contemplar, era algo que una podía hacer.

Everything I write for the first time is written with a pencil.

It was as though he no longer needed to drink to forget whatever it was he could not remember. Now he could not remember that he had ever forgotten anything. Perhaps that was why for the first time after that old day in France he was beginning to miss the presence of other people. Shadrack had improved enough to feel lonely. If he was lonely before, he didn't know because the noise he kept up, the roaring, the busyness protected him from knowing it.

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

Men wear you down to a sharp piece of gristle if you let them.

Sometimes. Sometimes it's a ambulance. Today it's a hearse.

Not hating him is not enough; liking, loving him is not useful. I have to alter things. I have to alter things. I have to be a shadow who wishes him well, mine the smokes of the dead left over from their lives.

Personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice, is more than a barren life, it's a trivial one.

There are no innocent white people, because every one of them is a potential nigger-killer, if not an actual one.

recevoir le pouvoir de dominer autrui est chose difficile ; s'emparer de force de ce pouvoir est chose erronée ; donner ce pouvoir sur soi-même à autrui est chose mauvaise.

Some whites made sacrifices for Negroes. Real sacrifices.' '...But they haven't been able to stop the killing either. They are outraged, but that doesn't stop it. They might even speak out, but that doesn't stop it either. They might even inconvenience themselves, but the killing goes on and on.

Girls can do that. Steer a man away from death or drive him to it.

But she had gone on a real trip, and now she was different. She got out of bed and lit the lamp to look in the mirror. (...) She looked for a long time and suddenly a shiver ran through her. I'm me, she whispered. Me. Nel didn't quite know what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant. I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me.

She sat there, chewing her thumbnail, wondering just how bad could it be riding with a dead person? There was some herb in her pack. Not much but enough, she thought, to keep her from freaking. She reached out and pinched off a bit of crust from a pie sitting before her and noticed for the first time the place was loaded with food, mostly untouched.

He didn't even care what I looked like. I could be anything, do anything- and it pleased him. Something about that made me mad.

Listen to me. You are about to find out what it takes, how the world is, how it works and how it changes when you are a parent.

Bodacious black Eves unredeemed by Mary, they are like panicked does leaping toward a sun that has finished burning off the mist and now pours its holy oil over the hides of game. God at their side, the men take aim. For Ruby.

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

Sweetheart. That's what the weather was called. Sweetheart weather, the prettiest day of the year.

You don't know what heat is until you cross the border from Texas to Louisiana in the summer. You can't come up with words that catch it. Trees give up. Turtles cook in their shells. Describe that if you know how.

How'd you get rid of her?' 'Killed her. Then I killed the me that killed her.' 'Who's left?' 'Me.

The writing is — I'm free from pain. It's the place where I live; it's where I have control; it's where nobody tells me what to do; it's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing.

whether imbued with or struggling against conventional Western views of benighted Africa, their protagonists found the continent to be as empty as that collection plate—a vessel waiting for whatever copper and silver imagination was pleased to place there.