Quote

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?

Toni Morrison

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Take
Whimpered
Giving
Gimme
Love
Carry
Heavy
Lord
Jesus
Hate
Give

More quotes by Toni Morrison

Image
the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)
Toni Morrison
Image
Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
Toni Morrison
Image
Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
Toni Morrison
Image
And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.
Toni Morrison
Image
It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.
Toni Morrison
Image
If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
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
Image
...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.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.
Toni Morrison
Image
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.
Toni Morrison
Image
This word LOVE - discredited, clicheed - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human.
Toni Morrison
Image
Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
Toni Morrison
Image
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
Image
They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations.
Toni Morrison
Image
There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.
Toni Morrison
Image
It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had. *Milkman*
Toni Morrison