Quote

I know what every colored woman in this country is doing... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.

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
World
Woman
Stump
History
Redwoods
Women
Stumps
Live
Colored
Country
Dying
Going
Difference
Every
Differences
Like
Sure

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The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.
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Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.
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...the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers. No wonder they forget pebbly creeks and when they do not forget the sky completely think of it as a tiny piece of information about the time of day or night.
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A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.
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Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.
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Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.
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Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, goodbye would break me to pieces. Ain't that sweet. So long, she murmured from the far side of the trees.
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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?
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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...when the little boy discovered, at four, the same thing Mr. Smith had learned earlier -- that only birds and planes could fly -- he lost all interest in himself.
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Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.
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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.
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Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?
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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.
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I like marriage. The idea.
Toni Morrison
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Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.
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Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?
Toni Morrison
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Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses - young loving.
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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.
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