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Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards.

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
Writing
Bible
Thesaurus
Trying
Sight
Arrest
Usually
Deck
Wall
Dictionary
Playing
Walls
Taken
Cards
Everything
Six
Nothing
Bed

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The isolation, the separateness, is always a part of any utopia.
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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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Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
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If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.
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Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.
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I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.
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The function of freedom is to free someone else.
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The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.
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I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.
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Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
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The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time.
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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?
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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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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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There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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