Toni Morrison (b. Chloe Ardelia Wofford, February 18, 1931) is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved and the Nobel Prize in 1993. On May 29, 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
Anything dead coming back to life hurts.
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.
At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.
Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.
Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
If you surrender to the wind you can ride it.
If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.
Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
Lonely was much better than alone.
Love is never any better than the lover.
Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.
Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try.
Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place- the picture of it- stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world.
Something that is loved is never lost.
There is really nothing more to say- except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world.
You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
Categories: Quotes of the day, Toni Morrison
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