Toni Morrison: Quotes about love

“But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.”

“And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.”

“Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.”

“I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more”

“My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.”

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”

“Love is never any better than the lover.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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…”

“guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.”

“It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love… You can't own a human being.”

“You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.”

“Love is divine only and difficult always.”

“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.”

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

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