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Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take 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
Take
Would
Life
Boiled
Relationships
Save
Perhaps
Human
Humans

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We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.
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For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.
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If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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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.
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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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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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What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
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Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.
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I don't do the things other people call play.
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Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it sometimes you can't even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? ... The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him they don't wrap him up. They let him keep his head high, free.
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Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s it's choosing the ones you want.
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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.
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Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
Toni Morrison
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Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.
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I guess I'm depressed. I don't know. I can't explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part of it is being not as physically strong as I once was. And part of it is my misunderstanding, I think, of what's going on in the world.
Toni Morrison
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The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot, over and over again, so that it looks like I never did.
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When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.
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Love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.
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Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.
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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?
Toni Morrison