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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?

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
Stay
Differences
Alive
Happy
True
Need
Needs
World
Difference

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Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.
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Much handled things are always soft(27).
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Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.
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There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Oppressive language does more than represent violence it is violence does more than represent the limits of knowledge it limits knowledge.
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Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.
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Word-work is sublime... because it is generative it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
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The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.
Toni Morrison
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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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I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.
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Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.
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The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia.
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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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He said, 'Always. Always.
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Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards.
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