Toni Morrison Quotes

The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did.

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

Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured

A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

A coward with a gun is the most dangerous person in the world

Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.

It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.

Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.

Maybe [I care about language] because I'm an editor, maybe because I'm picky, but it's all we got, don't shrink it. Don't dumb it out, make it little.

More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?

The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.

But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.

...when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier -- that only birds and planes could fly -- he lost all interest in himself.

Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.

When a man angers you, he conquers you.

A bestseller is a book that non-book buyers buy

I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me.

Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.

Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself

I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.

Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.' Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part.

...the change was adjustment without improvement.

I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.

What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

The seeds of destruction lie in the definition of "chosen-ness" and can easily blossom into bigotry. It's not inevitable but it needs constant care to avoid.

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.

I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got.

When I write, I don't translate for white readers.... Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If I'm specific, and I don't overexplain, then anyone can overhear me.

I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.

You your own best thing, Sethe. You are.

The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.

Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly. 'There must be another one like you,' he whispered to her. 'There's got to be at least one more woman like you.

Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.

I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.

Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It's more provocative to me and more stimulating to me.

[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.

When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.

The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.

Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.

He said, 'Always. Always.

you got two feet, Sethe, not four." he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; tactless and quiet.

Deep, deep trouble. Can't rival the dead for love. Lose every time.

You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.