Quotes from Toni Morrison

The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.

The kind of clarity crazy people demand from the not-crazy.

Not like the me was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on. A secret somebody you didn't have to feel sorry for or have to fight for. -Felice

Her heavy knives of defense against misery, regret, gall and hurt, she placed one by one on a bank where dear water rushed on below.

I didn't kill him, I just fucked him

What was taken by outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity was in fact a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other than good ones.

The complexity of the so-called individual that's been praised for decades in America somehow has narrowed itself to the 'me'. When I was a young girl we were called citizens – American citizens. We were second-class citizens, but that was the word. In the 50s and 60s they started calling us consumers. So we did – consume. Now they don't use those words any more – it's the American taxpayer and those are different attitudes.

The desire, let alone the gesture,to meet her needs was good enough to loft her spirits to the place where she could take the next step: ask for some clarifying word; some advice about how to keep on with a brain greedy for news nobody could live with in a world happy to provide it.

He relished never knowing what lay in his path, who might approach with what intention.

She wants you here as much as I do. For her it is to save her life. For me it is to have one.

Our debates, for the most part, are examples unworthy of a playground: name-calling, verbal slaps, gossip, giggles, all while the swings and slides of governance remain empty.

You couldn't learn age, but adulthood was there for all.

An editor is like a priest or a psychiatrist; if you get the wrong one then you are better off alone.

He didn't want an outsider judging his family. That was his job.

They were, in fact and at last, free. And the lives of these old black women were synthesized in their eyes -- a puree of tragedy and humor, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy.

She was one of the few things abhorrent to him that he could touch and therefore hurt. He poured out on her the sum of all his inarticulate fury and aborted desires. Hating her, he could leave himself intact.

Is that what happened? Standing in the cane, he was trying to catch a girl he was yet to see, but his heart knew all about, and me, holding on to him but wishing he was the golden boy I never saw either. Which means from the very beginning I was a substitute and so was he.

The visionary language of the doomed reaches heights of linguistic ardor with which language of the blessed and saved cannot compete.

Nothing in this world loves a black man more than another black man. You hear of solitary white men, but niggers? Can't stay away from one another a whole day. So. It looks to me like you the envy of the world.

And the lives of these old black women were synthesized in their eyes- a puree of tragedy and humor, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy.

All narrative begins for me as listening. When I read, I listen. When I write, I listen—for silence, inflection, rhythm, rest.

Everything depends on knowing how much...Good is knowing when to stop.

a girl has got to be a daughter first. She have to learn that. And if she never learns how to be a daughter, she can't never learn how to be a woman. I mean a real woman: a woman good enough for a child; good enough for a man - good enough even for the respect of other women.

If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world.