Toni Morrison: Trending quotes (page 6)

“No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.”

“Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live”

“In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.”

“You been gone too long, Sula.

Not too long, but maybe too far.”

“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”

“Love is divine only and difficult always.”

“Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.”

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe.”

“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.”

“You don't have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.”

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

“… the change was adjustment without improvement.”

“People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.”

“What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”

“For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.”

“I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.”

“the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. it was a fine cry -- loud and long -- but it had no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

“The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.' Sula said that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell.”

“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.”