Quotes from Toni Morrison

I don't wait to be struck by lightning and don't need certain slants of light in order to write.

Love just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event.

She's special, Old Man." "So am I, Son. So am I.

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.

A person's love is only as good as the person; a stupid person loves stupidly, a violent man loves violently.

After five years of a sad and disgruntled marriage BoyBoy took off. During the time they were together he was very much preoccupied with other women and not home much. He did whatever he could that he liked, and he liked womanizing best, drinking second, and abusing Eva third. When he left in November, Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three beets, and no idea of what or how to feel.

She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine

You can't take a life and walk off and leave it. Life is life. Precious. And the dead you kill is yours. They stay with you anyway, in your mind. So it's a better thing, a more better thing to have the bones right there with you wherever you go. That way, it frees up your mind.

We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. Our Innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair.

The brothers approaching the cellar were once identical.

I am determined to de-fang cheap racism, annihilate and discredit the routine, easy, available color fetish, which is reminiscent of slavery itself (The Origin of Others, 53).

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it

We are baptized and can have happiness when this life is done.

Does anybody regret leaving a hotel room? Does anybody, who has a home, a real home somewhere, want to stay there? Does anybody look back with affection, or even disgust, at a hotel room when they leave it?

between the schoolhouse and Holy Redeemer

and feel the oldest and most devastating pain there is: not the pain of childhood, but the remembrance of it.

Anna clung to him while he explained that the scorpion's tail was up because it was just as scared of her as she was of it. In Detroit, watching baby-faced police handling guns, she remembered the scorpion's rigid tail.

We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

He just wanted to beat a path away from his parents' past, which was also their present and which was threatening to become his present as well.

Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.

Recriminations and accusations peppered her visits to Up Beach, and when she told Papa why her eyes were puffy, she was relieved by his firm response. All she needed was him, which was lucky because he was all she had.

running across the street to get out of the way of mounted police meant obstructing traffic. Finally Dr. Rio. A Cadillac. A hammer. A gentle, almost reluctant arrest. After an hour's wait, no charges pressed, no write-up or interview, they gave her back the shopping bag and let her go.

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?