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The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.

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
Physical
Virtue
Beauty
Dumbest
Ideas
Pernicious
Nothing
Destructive
World
Concept
Concepts
Western

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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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Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?
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Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.
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Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?
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Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.
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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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I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now.
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Most of our lives are spent in little towns, little towns all throughout the country. That's where we live. And that's where the juices come from and that's where we made it, not made it in terms of success but made who we are.
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If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.
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Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
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They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations.
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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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A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.
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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.
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I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.
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When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.
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Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face you are me.
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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.
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I like marriage. The idea.
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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.
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