Quote

Beauty was not simply something to behold it was something one could do.

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
Behold
Simply
Beauty
Something

More quotes by Toni Morrison

Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.
Toni Morrison
Image
Jealousy we understood and thought natural... But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.
Toni Morrison
Image
Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death - each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
Toni Morrison
Image
To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.
Toni Morrison
Image
Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.
Toni Morrison
Image
When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.
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
If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.
Toni Morrison
Image
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
Image
The function of freedom is to free someone else.
Toni Morrison
Image
You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
Toni Morrison
Image
I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.
Toni Morrison
Image
When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
Toni Morrison
Image
I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.
Toni Morrison
Image
Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
Toni Morrison
Image
We read about how Ajax and Achilles will die for each other, but very little about the friendship of women.
Toni Morrison
Image
The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.
Toni Morrison
Image
The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison