Quotes from Toni Morrison

I am suggesting that we pay as much attention to our nurturing sensibilities as to our ambition. You are moving in the direction of freedom, and the function of freedom is to free somebody else. You are moving toward self-fulfillment, and the consequences of that fulfillment should be to discover that there is something just as important as you are.

A little bird'll be here with the morning." "Oh?" said the rose-petal lady. "Tomorrow morning?" "That's the only morning coming." "It can't be," the rose-petal lady said. "It's too soon." "No it ain't. Right on time.

There were two rooms and she took him into one of them, hoping he wouldn't mind the fact that she was not prepared; that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked; the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else - doorknobs, straps, hooks, the sadness that crouches in corners, and the passing of time - was interference.

If scientific language is about longer individual life in exchange for an ethical one; if political agenda is the xenophobic protection of a few of our families against the catastrophic others; if religious language is discredited as contempt for the nonreligious; if secular language bridles in fear of the sacred; if market language is merely an excuse for inciting greed; if the future of knowledge is not wisdom but "upgrade," where might we look for humanity's own future?

She slept in the bed with us. Frieda on the outside because she is brave—it never occurs to her that if in her sleep her hand hangs over the edge of the bed "something" will crawl out from under it and bite her fingers off. I sleep near the wall because that thought has occurred to me. Pecola, therefore, had to sleep in the middle.

Wherever he was—on the porch, at the kitchen table, in the garden, in the living room reading—that's where the power and deference were. He didn't exert power; he assumed it. And it was in part from knowing him that I felt I could understand and create the men in Ruby—their easy assumption of uncontested authority.

In pursuing your highest ambitions, don't let your personal safety diminish the safety of your stepsister. In wielding the power that is deservedly yours, don't permit it to enslave your stepsisters. Let your might and your power emanate from that place in you that is nurturing and caring. Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.

fascinatingly repulsive

There is no way to answer the systemic distortions of the press.

He left me his violin.

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

Of all the wishes people had brought him—money, love, revenge—this seemed to him the most poignant and the one most deserving of fulfillment. A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power.

Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous.

How old are you, Freddie?" "Who knows? They made dirt in the morning and me that afternoon.

Nobody ever sees a cook eat anything.

Navigating a white male world was not threatening. It wasn't even interesting. I was more interesting than they were.

The danger of sympathizing with the stranger is the possibility of becoming a stranger.

He fought her the way a coward fights a man--with feet, the palms of his hands, and teeth.

I could feel that purple deep inside me. And that lemonade Mama used to make when Pap came in out the fields. It be cool and yellowish, with seeds floating near the bottom. And that streak of green them june bugs made on the trees the night we left from down home. All of them colors was in me. Just sitting there. So when Cholly come up and tickled my foot, it was like them berries, that lemonade, them streaks of green the june bugs made, all come together.

Quando le cose morte tornano in vita, fanno sempre male.

Hi." "Hi." "Waiting for your sister?" "Uh-huh." "Which way do you go home?" "Down Twenty-first Street to Broadway." "Why don't you go down Twenty-second Street?" "'Cause I live on Twenty-first Street." "Oh. I can walk that way, I guess. Partly, anyway." "Free country.

When one assumes that you can substitute license for freedom, when one assumes that you can use another's deficiency for one's own generosity, when one assumes that you can use another person's misery and nightmares in order to clarify your own dreams. When all of those things are done and completed, then the surrender and the betrayal of one's culture is also complete.

Frieda came toward us, her brown stockings straining at the knees because she had tucked the toe under to hide a hole in the foot.

Ä°nsan hayallerin nas?l suya düÅŸtüÄŸüne iliÅŸkin hakikati öÄŸrenmenin peÅŸindeyse eÄŸer, asla bir hayalperestin sözüne inanmamal?d?r.