Quote

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

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
Race
Social
Human
Scientifically
Humans
Construct
Thing
Constructs
Racism
None
Function

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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.
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Word-work is sublime... because it is generative it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
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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.
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It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.
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A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.
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This is really skin privilege, the ranking of color in terms of its closeness to white people or white-skinned people and its devaluation according to how dark one is and the impact that has on people who are dedicated to the privileges of certain levels of skin color.
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I thought the whole world was like Lorain.
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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 have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.
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I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.
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How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.
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I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.
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Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
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It seems to me everything Shakespeare did was political.
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Intimacy is extremely important to me and I want it to be extremely important to the readers.
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they ran in the sunlight, creating their own breeze which pressed their dresses into their damp skin. Reaching a kind of square of four locked trees which promised cooling they flung themselves into the shade to taste their lip sweat and contemplate the wildness that had come upon them so suddenly
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Oppressive language does more than represent violence it is violence does more than represent the limits of knowledge it limits knowledge.
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I like marriage. The idea.
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Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.
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