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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
Humans
Construct
Thing
Constructs
Racism
None
Function
Race
Social
Human
Scientifically

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Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.
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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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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.
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Anything dead coming back to life hurts.
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I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.
Toni Morrison
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Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.
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A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.
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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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If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
Toni Morrison
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She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?
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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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Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.
Toni Morrison
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He said, 'Always. Always.
Toni Morrison
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No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.
Toni Morrison
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Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.
Toni Morrison
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A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.
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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.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
Toni Morrison