Quote

Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?

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
Lion
Grasshopper
Mice
Grasshoppers
Lions
Poppy
Game
Poppies
Games
Snake
Mouse
Ants
Snakes

More quotes by Toni Morrison

Image
Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.
Toni Morrison
Image
If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
Toni Morrison
Image
The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
Toni Morrison
Image
The function of freedom is to free someone else.
Toni Morrison
Image
She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
Toni Morrison
Image
Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
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
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
Image
A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective they are that.
Toni Morrison
Image
My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
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?
Toni Morrison
Image
At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.
Toni Morrison
Image
My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.
Toni Morrison
Image
You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
Toni Morrison
Image
If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.
Toni Morrison
Image
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
Image
How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.
Toni Morrison