Quotes from Toni Morrison

Oh, sure. You have to know what's wrong before you can find what's right.

For a while, anyway, until my sex life became sort of like Diet Coke—deceptively sweet minus nutrition.

Adults do not talk to us—they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information. When we trip and fall down they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration.

I only know that I will never again trust my life, my future, to the whims of men, in companies or out. Never again will their judgment have anything to do with what I think I can do.

Come Prepared or Not at All

When he arrived he thought their flaws were normal; their disagreements ordinary. They were pleased by the accomplishments of their neighbors and their mockery of the lazy and the loose was full of laughter. Or used to be. Now, it seemed, the glacial wariness they once confined to strangers more and more was directed toward each other.

The death of self-esteem can occur quickly, easily in children, before their ego has "legs," so to speak.

Did you ever see the way clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can't even see the mountain for all the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don't wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him.

The handsome raucous men wanted to marry, live with, support, fund, and promote her. Smart and beautiful women wanted to be her friend, confidante, lover, neighbor, guest, playmate, host, servant, student or simply near.

And they might never forget.

Lay em down, Sethe. Sword and shield. Down. Down. Lay both of em down. Don't study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield.

Eran lo bastante viejas para encolerizarse donde y cuando quisieran, estaban lo bastante fatigadas para esperar sin angustia la muerte, lo bastante desvinculadas de la carne para aceptar la noción de dolor a la vez que ignoraban su presencia. Eran, de hecho y al fin, libres.

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.

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.

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.

Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.

[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.

Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.

Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing.

Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

We read about how Ajax and Achilles will die for each other, but very little about the friendship of women.

Don't ever think I feel for you, or feel over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.