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The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

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
Reader
Possible
Vitality
Ability
Speakers
Lying
Imagined
Language
Readers
Lives
Actual
Writers
Lies

More quotes by Toni Morrison

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You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.
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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At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.
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If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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Listen, baby, people do funny things. Specially us. The cards are stacked against us and just trying to stay in the game, stay alive and in the game, makes us do funny things. Things we can't help. Things that make us hurt one another. We don't even know why.
Toni Morrison
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The seeds of destruction lie in the definition of chosen-ness and can easily blossom into bigotry. It's not inevitable but it needs constant care to avoid.
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Intimacy is extremely important to me and I want it to be extremely important to the readers.
Toni Morrison
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Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.
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Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
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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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In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.
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Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face you are me.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
Toni Morrison
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Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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Not knowing it was hard knowing it was harder
Toni Morrison
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There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises.... If you write for life, you'll work hard you'll do what's honest, not what pays
Toni Morrison
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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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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.
Toni Morrison