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It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.

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
Would
Thick
Birds
Meeting
Meetings
Ten
Bird
Saws
Years

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I dream a dream that dreams back at me.
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Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
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Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing.
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I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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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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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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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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Love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.
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Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.
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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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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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You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.
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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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If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.
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I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now.
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Not knowing it was hard knowing it was harder
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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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Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.
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If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.
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