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
Function
Race
Social
Human
Scientifically
Humans
Construct
Thing
Constructs
Racism
None

More quotes by Toni Morrison

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Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.
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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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I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.
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Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
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There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.
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I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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Anything I have ever learned of any consequence, I have learned from Black people. I have never been bored by any Black person, ever.
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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.
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It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.
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All important things are hard.
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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 want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are
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I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.
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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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The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.
Toni Morrison
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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
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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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Occasionally, as children, we might figure out how to call somebody a name, and they would figure out how to call us. But it wasn't - it was so light. It was so fluffy. I didn't really have a strong awareness of segregation and the separation of races until I left Lorain, Ohio.
Toni Morrison
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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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The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.
Toni Morrison