Quote

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.

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
Sweet
Took
Endurable
Voice
Greens
Words
Colored
Pain
Blues
Left
Conviction
Away
Misery
Mother
Grief

More quotes by Toni Morrison

Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.
Toni Morrison
Image
How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.
Toni Morrison
Image
Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.
Toni Morrison
Image
If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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
The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
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
What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.
Toni Morrison
Image
I feel like today we always glorify the young, just-plucked-from-college writer. But it's much harder to start writing later, in middle age, struggling on a book around a full-time job and family.
Toni Morrison
Image
The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did.
Toni Morrison
Image
Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. Throughout this fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: ...she knew there was nothing to fear.
Toni Morrison
Image
I guess I'm depressed. I don't know. I can't explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part of it is being not as physically strong as I once was. And part of it is my misunderstanding, I think, of what's going on in the world.
Toni Morrison
Image
Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
Toni Morrison
Image
A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.
Toni Morrison
Image
Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability.
Toni Morrison
Image
The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.
Toni Morrison
Image
Beauty was not simply something to behold it was something one could do.
Toni Morrison
Image
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
Toni Morrison
Image
Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face you are me.
Toni Morrison