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Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.

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
Defined
Beats
Schoolteacher
Show
Belonged
Shows
Beloved
Definitions
Clever
Anyway
Beat

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You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.
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My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.
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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.
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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.
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A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.
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If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you.
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Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
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I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.
Toni Morrison
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Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
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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
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Love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.
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.
Toni Morrison
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Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
Toni Morrison
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A bestseller is a book that non-book buyers buy
Toni Morrison
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Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
Toni Morrison
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Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
Toni Morrison
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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