Toni Morrison: Trending quotes

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Toni Morrison: 368 quotes30 likes

“Every sentence, every word, was new to them and they listened to what he said like bright-eyed ravens, trembling in their eagerness to catch & interpret every sound in the universe.”

Toni Morrison book Song of Solomon

Source: Song of Solomon

“I don’t think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get.”

Toni Morrison book God Help the Child

Source: God Help the Child

“There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for
life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises….
If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,
not what pays”

Toni Morrison

“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.”

Toni Morrison

“I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.”

Toni Morrison book Jazz

Jazz

“A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 2

“Was there anything so loathsome as a wilfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.”

Toni Morrison book Tar Baby

Tar Baby (1981)

“I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. 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.”

Toni Morrison

Interview in Newsweek (30 March 1981)

“You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.”

Toni Morrison book Home

Home (novella), p. 126 (2012)

“The picture is still there and what's more, if you go there — you who never was there — if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over — over and done with — it's going to always be there waiting for you.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 3

“Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye (1969) First lines

“In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

First lines
Sula (1973)

“Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Paradise (1997)

“Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him. They were always women who had been spoiled children. Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight. They could not believe or accept the fact that they were unloved; they believed that the world itself was off balance when it appeared as though they were not loved. Why did they think they were so lovable? Why did they think their brand of love was better than, or even as good as, anybody else's? But they did. And they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way.”

Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon (1977)

“It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

Toni Morrison

A Humanist View (1975)

“I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now. Novels are always inquiries for me.”

Toni Morrison

Interview in Salon magazine ( 2 February 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20000301183409/http://www.salon.com/books/int/1998/02/cov_si_02int.html

“I would have known right away who you was when the sun blotted out your face the way it did when I took you to the grape arbor. I would have known at once when my water broke. And when I did see your face it had more than a hint of what you would look like after all these years. I would have known who you were right away because the cup after cup of water you drank proved and connected to the fact that you dribbled clear spit on my face the day I got to 124. I would have known right off, but Paul D distracted me. Otherwise I would have seen my fingernail prints right there on your forehead for all the world to see. From when I held your head up, out in the shed. And later on, when you asked me about the earrings I used to dangle for you to play with, I would have recognized you right off, except for Paul D.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 20

“If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 1

“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Paradise (1998) First lines

“Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 3