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Oppressive language does more than represent violence it is violence does more than represent the limits of knowledge it limits knowledge.

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
Represent
Limits
Violence
Knowledge
Language
Black
Doe
Oppressive

More quotes by Toni Morrison

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Being able to laugh got me through.
Toni Morrison
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Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.
Toni Morrison
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I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.
Toni Morrison
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It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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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
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Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?
Toni Morrison
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My metaphor is that evil always has a top hat and a cape, and goodness is over there in the corner. For me it's just too easy, if you hate your country or your wife, so you kill them. You can't think through that, you can't feel through that, you can't do the work. And now we have guns. Solution? I don't think so.
Toni Morrison
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There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.
Toni Morrison
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If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you.
Toni Morrison
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She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
Toni Morrison
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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....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.
Toni Morrison
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I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important?
Toni Morrison
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Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.
Toni Morrison
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Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
Toni Morrison
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The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.
Toni Morrison
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If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.
Toni Morrison
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We read about how Ajax and Achilles will die for each other, but very little about the friendship of women.
Toni Morrison