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Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.
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
Closed
Stems
Thought
Grass
Peaches
World
Spring
Pits
Empty
Ants
Went
Split
Eyes
Splits
Milkweed
Eye
Stem
Peach
Saturday
Sunk
Death
More quotes by Toni Morrison
This is really skin privilege, the ranking of color in terms of its closeness to white people or white-skinned people and its devaluation according to how dark one is and the impact that has on people who are dedicated to the privileges of certain levels of skin color.
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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
I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.
Toni Morrison
I feel like today we always glorify the young, just-plucked-from-college writer. But it's much harder to start writing later, in middle age, struggling on a book around a full-time job and family.
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Occasionally, as children, we might figure out how to call somebody a name, and they would figure out how to call us. But it wasn't - it was so light. It was so fluffy. I didn't really have a strong awareness of segregation and the separation of races until I left Lorain, Ohio.
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Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It's more provocative to me and more stimulating to me.
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
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I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.
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Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
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I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.
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Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?
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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.
Toni Morrison
Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
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Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
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I like marriage. The idea.
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If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.
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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.
Toni Morrison
Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly. 'There must be another one like you,' he whispered to her. 'There's got to be at least one more woman like you.
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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.
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The seeds of destruction lie in the definition of chosen-ness and can easily blossom into bigotry. It's not inevitable but it needs constant care to avoid.
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