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

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
According
Views
Done
Work
People
Entangled
Shaping

More quotes by Toni Morrison

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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
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Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
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Isolation, you know, carries the seeds of its own destruction because as times change, other things seep in.
Toni Morrison
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What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
Toni Morrison
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To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.
Toni Morrison
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Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.
Toni Morrison
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It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.
Toni Morrison
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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
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Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.
Toni Morrison
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My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.
Toni Morrison
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For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.
Toni Morrison
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If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you.
Toni Morrison
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Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
Toni Morrison
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It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.
Toni Morrison
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The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.
Toni Morrison
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The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
Toni Morrison
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Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.
Toni Morrison
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Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it sometimes you can't even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? ... 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 high, free.
Toni Morrison
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There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.
Toni Morrison
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My metaphor is that evil always has a top hat and a cape, and goodness is over there in the corner. For me it's just too easy, if you hate your country or your wife, so you kill them. You can't think through that, you can't feel through that, you can't do the work. And now we have guns. Solution? I don't think so.
Toni Morrison