Toni Morrison: Trending quotes (page 4)

“Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder.
And I the eye of the storm.”

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

“A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.”

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

“I dream a dream that dreams back at me”

“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”

“To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.”

“Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.”

“They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations…”

“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”

“Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder”

“If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.”

“She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.”

“the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)”

“Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.”

“Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.”

“What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?”

“To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.”

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