Toni Morrison Quotes

Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent.

More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

Good for you. More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.You shout the word—mind, mind, mind—over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice.

I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.

He wondered if there was anyone in the world who liked him. Liked him for himself alone.

The best thing she was, was her children.

Grownups don't pay it much attention because they can't imagine anything more majestic to a child than their own selves and so confused dependance for reverence.

God take what He would, " she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing.

Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.

The human body is robust. It can gather strength when it's in mortal danger.

You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose.

…he didn’t needs words or even want them because he knew how they could lie, could heat your blood and disappear.

Language, when it finally comes, has the vigor of a felon pardoned after twenty-one years on hold. Sudden, raw, stripped to its underwear.

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead.

You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face.

To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The "better life" she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one.

He can't value you more than you value yourself.

God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so.

She missed -- without knowing what she missed-- paints and crayons

We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious.

It never occurred to us that the Earth itself might have been unyielding

The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love.

Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's.

Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.

Sleep without the fragrance of her hair next to him was impossible.

What's fair ain't necessarily right.

From the windows, through the fur of snow, the landscape became more melancholy when the sun successfully brightened the quiet trees, unable to speak without their leaves.

...maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don't believe it and don't count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as dangerous.

There is honey in this land sweeter than any I know of, and I have cut cane in places where the dirt itself tasted like sugar, so that's saying a heap.

Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.

Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed, " she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.

Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon.

We tend to overlook goodness, but we must put goodness front and center in our lives.

I've traveled. All over. I've never seen anything like you. How could anything be put together like you? Do you know how beautiful you are? Have you looked at yourself?''I'm looking now.

There was a hint of spring in her sole green eyes, something summery in her complexion, and a rich autumn ripeness in her walk.

Write at the edges of the day.

If I hadn't trained Lula Ann properly she wouldn't have known to always cross the street and avoid white boys.

I loved the geography part. Learning about that made me want to read.

Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.

All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allow

We will be judged by how well we love.

He licked his lips. ‘Well, if you want my opinion-‘‘I don’t, ‘ She said. ‘I have my own.

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.

When fear rules, obedience is the only survival choice.

We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

Passion is never enough neither is skill.

She stopped then and turned her face toward him and the hateful wind.