Quote

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

Toni Morrison

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Toni Morrison
Age: 88 †
Born: 1931
Born: February 18
Died: 2019
Died: August 5
Audiobook Narrator
Librettist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Lorain
Ohio
Chloe Ardelia Wofford
Chloe Anthony Wofford-Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford
Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison
Art
Sociological
Form
Rigorous
Sociology
Tolerance
Serious
Taught
Literature
Black

More quotes by Toni Morrison

Image
Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.
Toni Morrison
Image
My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.
Toni Morrison
Image
If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
Toni Morrison
Image
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
Image
Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
Toni Morrison
Image
Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.
Toni Morrison
Image
I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.
Toni Morrison
Image
When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?
Toni Morrison
Image
He wants to put his story next to hers.
Toni Morrison
Image
The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.
Toni Morrison
Image
What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.
Toni Morrison
Image
A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective they are that.
Toni Morrison
Image
Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
Toni Morrison
Image
You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
Toni Morrison
Image
Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing.
Toni Morrison
Image
No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
Toni Morrison
Image
Jealousy we understood and thought natural... But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.
Toni Morrison
Image
Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
Toni Morrison
Image
A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
Toni Morrison
Image
Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?
Toni Morrison