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We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

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
Violence
Passion
Freedom
Thought
Mistook
Recklessness
Indolence
Leisure

More quotes by Toni Morrison

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Evil is so seductive. It needs to grind you up and make you its slave.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.
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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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The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.
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Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?
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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?
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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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I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.
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We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.
Toni Morrison
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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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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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Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face you are me.
Toni Morrison
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I know what every colored woman in this country is doing... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.
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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The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia.
Toni Morrison
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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
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A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.
Toni Morrison
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I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
Toni Morrison