I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. - Toni Morrison
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
I get angry about things, then go on and work. - Toni Morrison
Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth. - Toni Morrison
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.[Conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth, PBS NewsHour, March 9, 1998] - Toni Morrison
I'm just trying to look at something without blinking. - Toni Morrison
I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game. - Toni Morrison
No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along. - Toni Morrison
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war. - Toni Morrison
It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "anything dead coming back to life hurts. - Toni Morrison
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. - Toni Morrison
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you speak. - Toni Morrison
For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction. - Toni Morrison
What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not? - Toni Morrison
Sleep without the fragrance of her hair next to him was impossible. - Toni Morrison
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. - Toni Morrison
I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself. - Toni Morrison
She is a friend of my mind... The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. - Toni Morrison
If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. - Toni Morrison
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. - Toni Morrison
Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon. - Toni Morrison
I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. - 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. - 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
From the windows, through the fur of snow, the landscape became more melancholy when the sun successfully brightened the quiet trees, unable to speak without their leaves. - Toni Morrison
I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is―a politician. - Toni Morrison
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. - Toni Morrison
It never occurred to us that the Earth itself might have been unyielding - Toni Morrison
The function of freedom is to free someone else. - Toni Morrison
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. - Toni Morrison
Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it. - Toni Morrison
Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet. - Toni Morrison
We were two throats and one eye and we had no price. - Toni Morrison
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. - Toni Morrison
Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. - Toni Morrison
Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form. - Toni Morrison
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. - Toni Morrison
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. - Toni Morrison
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life. - 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. - Toni Morrison
That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. - 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. - Toni Morrison
There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how. - Toni Morrison
When I write, I don't translate for white readers.... Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If I'm specific, and I don't overexplain, then anyone can overhear me. - Toni Morrison
I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That's who I am. I have been writing under this other person's name. I write some things now as Chloe Wofford, private things. I regret having called myself when I published my first novel, The Bluest Eye. - Toni Morrison
Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf. - Toni Morrison
She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. - Toni Morrison
Poison is like the drowned; it always floats. - Toni Morrison