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Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death - each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

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
Place
Lays
Indistinguishable
Stills
Birth
Ivy
Still
Took
Stems
Never
Side
Leafs
Life
Sides
Leaf
Eyes
Stem
Eye
Closed
Crawled
Death
Hidden
Crept

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Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
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It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.
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The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.
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Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
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Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?
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Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.
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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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As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer.
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Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured
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No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
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You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?
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The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia.
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The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.
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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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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?
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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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What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.
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Now what? All the battles feminists won about not being a sex object, not being evaluated based on these things, that now other generations are wallowing in, the extremes they go to, to look sexually attractive? It's stunning how things that one fought desperately for are just being tossed aside with aplomb.
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Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.
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The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.
Toni Morrison