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

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

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If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.
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I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.
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An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
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What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?
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If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
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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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For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.
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He said, 'Always. Always.
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Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.
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There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.
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You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.
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I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.
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Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
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Much handled things are always soft(27).
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Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.
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What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.
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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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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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The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.
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Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.
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