Toni Morrison

Novelist

1931-02-18 – 2019-08-05

Toni Morrison was an American novelist, editor, and professor whose work centers Black American life and history. She is best known for novels including Beloved, Song of Solomon, and The Bluest Eye. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Quotes by Toni Morrison

The human body is robust. It can gather strength when it's in mortal danger.
Read quote
Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.
Read quote
I can't tell you why I was in love with her. People didn't require that much as they do now. Folks were expected to be civilized to one another, honest, and - and clear. You relied on people being what they said they were, because there was no other way to survive.
Read quote
What do you know about somebody not being good enough for somebody else? And since when did you care whether Corinthians stood up or fell down? You've been laughing at us all your life. Corinthians. Mama. Me. Using us, ordering us, and judging us: how we cook your food; how we keep your house. But now, all of a sudden, you have Corinthians' welfare at heart and break her up from a man you don't approve of. Who are you to approve or disapprove anybody or anything? I was breathing air in the world thirteen years before your lungs were even formed. Corinthians, twelve. . . . but now you know what's best for the very woman who wiped the dribble from your chin because you were too young to know how to spit. Our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you. When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when you wanted to play, we entertained you; and when you got grown enough to know the difference between a woman and a two-toned Ford, everything in this house stopped for you. You have yet to . . . move a fleck of your dirt from one place to another. And to this day, you have never asked one of us if we were tired, or sad, or wanted a cup of coffee. . . . Where do you get the RIGHT to decide our lives? . . . I'll tell you where. From that hog's gut that hangs down between your legs. . . . I didn't go to college because of him. Because I was afraid of what he might do to Mama. You think because you hit him once that we all believe you were protecting her. Taking her side. It's a lie. You were taking over, letting us know you had the right to tell her and all of us what to do. . . . I don't make roses anymore, and you have pissed your last in this house.
Read quote
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
Read quote
You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that.
Read quote
I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.
Read quote
As it turned out, the sachem had been dead wrong.The Europes neither fled nor died out. In fact, said the old women in charge of the children, he had apologized for this error in prophecy and admitted that however many collapsed from ignorance or disease more would always come. They would come with languages that sounded like a dog bark; with a childish hunger for animal fur. They would forever fence land, ship whole trees to faraway countries, take any woman for quick pleasure, ruin soil, befoul sacred place and worship a dull, unimaginative god. They let their hogs browse the ocean shore turning it into dunes of sand where nothing green can ever grow again. Cut loose from the earth's soul, they insisted on purchase of its soil, and like all orphans they were insatiable. It was their destiny to chew up the world and spit out a horribleness that would destroy all primary peoples.
Read quote
Grownups don't pay it much attention because they can't imagine anything more majestic to a child than their own selves and so confused dependance for reverence.
Read quote
God take what He would, she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing.
Read quote
The best thing she was, was her children.
Read quote
Naturally all of them had a sad story: too much notice, not enough, or the worst kind. Some tale about dragon daddies and false-hearted men, or mean mamas and friends who did them wrong. Each story has a monster in it who made them tough instead of brave, so they open their legs rather than their hearts where that folded child is tucked.
Read quote
No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
Read quote
He wondered if there was anyone in the world who liked him. Liked him for himself alone.
Read quote
The box had done what Sweet Home had not, what working like an ass and living like a dog had not: drove him crazy so he would not lose his mind.
Read quote
You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.You shout the word— mind, mind, mind— over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice.
Read quote
Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.
Read quote
I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.
Read quote
Every Saturday morning, first thing before breakfast, his parents held conferences with their children requiring them to answer two questions put to each of them: 1. What have you learned that is true (and how do you know)? 2. What problem do you have?
Read quote
I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.
Read quote