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

Toni Morrison

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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
Taught
Literature
Black
Art
Sociological
Form
Rigorous
Sociology
Tolerance
Serious

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Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
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An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
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All important things are hard.
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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.
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Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.
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There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.
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At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.
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When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.
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You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.
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If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
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Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
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Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world's resources.
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Much handled things are always soft(27).
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The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.
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This word LOVE - discredited, clicheed - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human.
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The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean.
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Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.
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The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.
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When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.
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