Quote

A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.

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
Somebody
Wells
Well
Nothing
Men
Son

More quotes by Toni Morrison

Image
Jealousy we understood and thought natural... But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
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
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
Toni Morrison
Image
The function of freedom is to free someone else.
Toni Morrison
Image
Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
Toni Morrison
Image
He wants to put his story next to hers.
Toni Morrison
Image
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.
Toni Morrison
Image
Oppressive language does more than represent violence it is violence does more than represent the limits of knowledge it limits knowledge.
Toni Morrison
Image
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.
Toni Morrison
Image
Intimacy is extremely important to me and I want it to be extremely important to the readers.
Toni Morrison
Image
I know there's some poetry that sort of sounds like daisies, but most of the good poetry is also [political], you can feel the heartbeat it's about some situation that concerns human beings under duress. It's suggesting a solution, or just acknowledging that [the situation] exists. Art does that.
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
When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.
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
A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.
Toni Morrison
Image
When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.
Toni Morrison
Image
Political doesn't necessarily mean you have an agenda.
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
Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.
Toni Morrison