Toni Morrison quotes

Toni Morrison, the renowned American author, was born on February 18, 1931. With her exceptional literary contributions, she became a prominent figure in African American literature. As an influential novelist and essayist, Morrison explored themes of race, gender, and identity in her works. Her critically acclaimed novels, such as "Beloved" and "Song of Solomon," garnered numerous accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize in Literature. Morrison's storytelling prowess captivates readers worldwide, delving into complex issues and leaving an indelible impact. Discover the extraordinary literary legacy of Toni Morrison that continues to inspire and resonate with audiences globally.

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

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.

- Toni Morrison

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

- Toni Morrison

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

- Toni Morrison

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

- 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

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

- 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.

- Toni Morrison

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

- Toni Morrison

Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.

- Toni Morrison

You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.

- 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.

- Toni Morrison

I get angry about things, then go on and work.

- Toni Morrison

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

- Toni Morrison

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 wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

- Toni Morrison

When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.

- 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.

- 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.

- Toni Morrison

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.

- Toni Morrison

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

- Toni Morrison

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

- Toni Morrison

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.

- Toni Morrison

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

- Toni Morrison

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

- Toni Morrison

Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.

- Toni Morrison

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

- Toni Morrison

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

- Toni Morrison

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

- 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.

- Toni Morrison