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Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

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
Names
Language
Things
Protects
Meditation
Protect
Alone

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Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It's more provocative to me and more stimulating to me.
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You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation you revel in the smoke that the words send up.
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Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured
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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 best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.
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I dream a dream that dreams back at me.
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I began to realize that this idea of the lighter the better and the darker the worse was really - had an impact on sororities, on friendships, on all sorts of things, and it was stunning to me.
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We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
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When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
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The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.
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Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
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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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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?
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What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?
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Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.
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There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.
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The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.
Toni Morrison
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Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, goodbye would break me to pieces. Ain't that sweet. So long, she murmured from the far side of the trees.
Toni Morrison
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Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.
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When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?
Toni Morrison