Toni Morrison: Trending quotes (page 3)

“Love is never any better than the lover.”

“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”

“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. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”

“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.”

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”

“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.”

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.”

“He wants to put his story next to hers.”

“There is really nothing more to say — except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.”

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”

“It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.”

“Lonely was much better than alone.”

“All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.

[Conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth,, March 9, 1998]”

“Anything dead coming back to life hurts.”

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

“Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it… It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?”

“Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.”