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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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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
Stories
Tired
Littles
Please
Anything
Fiction
Little
Hear
Nothing
Getting
Important
Story
Grandma
Writing
Write
Boyfriend
Life
Tell
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More quotes by Toni Morrison

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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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they ran in the sunlight, creating their own breeze which pressed their dresses into their damp skin. Reaching a kind of square of four locked trees which promised cooling they flung themselves into the shade to taste their lip sweat and contemplate the wildness that had come upon them so suddenly
Toni Morrison
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The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.
Toni Morrison
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Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.
Toni Morrison
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Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s it's choosing the ones you want.
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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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If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
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I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.
Toni Morrison
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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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I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
Toni Morrison
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Maybe [I care about language] because I'm an editor, maybe because I'm picky, but it's all we got, don't shrink it. Don't dumb it out, make it little.
Toni Morrison
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I sang O Holy Night in a school choir. My mother came and listened to me and complimented me. So that was the high point. I cannot sing a note.
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In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.
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Being able to laugh got me through.
Toni Morrison
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You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.
Toni Morrison
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Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.
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Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.
Toni Morrison
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I don't work. I keep telling people I'm unemployed. And I don't wash dishes, and I don't wash clothes, and I don't clean my house. Somebody else does that.
Toni Morrison
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As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer.
Toni Morrison