Quotes About Empowerment

You are worthy to be seen. You are worthy to be heard. You are worthy to be sat with, to be walked beside. Even in your quietest moments, you are worthy of witness.

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

Black women were armed; black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.

There was nobody but me to take care of me so I invented myself, toughened myself.

He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?

You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

One taught her the alphabet; another a stitch. All taught her how it felt to wake up at dawn and decide what to do with the day.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and

You are your best thing.

Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up. Still. . . if her boys were gone . . .

Let me tell you right now the one important thing you'll ever need to know: Own things. And let the things you own own other things. Then you'll own yourself and other people too.

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

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.

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.

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.

To the two who gave me life and the one who made me free

I wanted to redirect, reinvent the political, cultural, and artistic judgments saved for African American writers.

You could get slaves to do anything at all, bear anything, if you gave them any hope that they could keep their children.

Being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn't limit my imagination; it expands it," Toni Morrison, who turns eighty-eight today

Every nigger I know wants to be cool. There's nothing wrong with controlling yourself, but can't can't nobody control other people.

she felt newly born. No longer forced to relive, no, outlive the disdain of her mother and the abandonment of her father.

The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang's cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the walls she wanted to breakthrough, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man. Unobstructed and undistracted, she could get serious and develop a plan to match her ambition and succeed.