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No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
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
Fingers
Joy
Anticipated
Simple
Accounting
Matter
Wet
Way
Shake
Shakes
Beloved
Teeth
More quotes by Toni Morrison
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.
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The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.
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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.
Toni Morrison
The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.
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You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?
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What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?
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But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.
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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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Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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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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Being able to laugh got me through.
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The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.
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Isolation, you know, carries the seeds of its own destruction because as times change, other things seep in.
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Hospitality is gold in this City you have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and defensive at the same time. When to love something and when to quit. If you don't know how, you can end up out of control or controlled by some outside thing like that hard case last winter.
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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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Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
Toni Morrison
What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?
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You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
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I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.
Toni Morrison