Toni Morrison quotes - page 7

Human life is holy, all of it. (Toni Morrison)
Even if the room they rented was smaller than the heifer's stall and darker than a morning privy, they stayed to look at their number, hear themselves in an audience, feel themselves moving down the street among hundreds of others who moved the way they did, and who, when they spoke, regardless of the accent, treated language like the same intricate, malleable toy designed for their play. View quote
Toni Morrison
Make a difference about something other than yourselves. View quote
Toni Morrison
When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same. View quote
Toni Morrison
Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader. View quote
Toni Morrison
A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people. View quote
Toni Morrison
I get angry about things, then go on and work. View quote
Toni Morrison
Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network. View quote
Toni Morrison
There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people. View quote
Toni Morrison
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything. View quote
Toni Morrison
Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time. (Toni Morrison)
It's been mentioned or suggested that Paradise will not be well studied, because it's about this unimportant intellectual topic, which is religion. View quote
Toni Morrison
I like marriage. The idea. View quote
Toni Morrison
Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city. View quote
Toni Morrison
For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event. View quote
Toni Morrison
Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it. View quote
Toni Morrison
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war. View quote
Toni Morrison
Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable. View quote
Toni Morrison
Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are. View quote
Toni Morrison
Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers. View quote
Toni Morrison
The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it. (Toni Morrison)
The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book. View quote
Toni Morrison
I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes. View quote
Toni Morrison
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to. View quote
Toni Morrison
You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone. View quote
Toni Morrison