Quote

Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live

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
Bears
Acquiesce
Land
Volition
Certain
Kills
Live
Nurture
Right
Seeds
Victim
Bear
Fruit

More quotes by Toni Morrison

Image
Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.
Toni Morrison
Image
Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?
Toni Morrison
Image
You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation you revel in the smoke that the words send up.
Toni Morrison
Image
He said, 'Always. Always.
Toni Morrison
Image
The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.
Toni Morrison
Image
I thought the whole world was like Lorain.
Toni Morrison
Image
Something that is loved is never lost.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.
Toni Morrison
Image
Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.
Toni Morrison
Image
Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.
Toni Morrison
Image
...the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers. No wonder they forget pebbly creeks and when they do not forget the sky completely think of it as a tiny piece of information about the time of day or night.
Toni Morrison
Image
What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
Toni Morrison
Image
It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.
Toni Morrison
Image
He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers. ‘Me? Me?
Toni Morrison
Image
A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.
Toni Morrison
Image
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
Image
I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now. Novels are always inquiries for me.
Toni Morrison
Image
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.
Toni Morrison
Image
We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
Toni Morrison