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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
Possible
Vitality
Ability
Speakers
Lying
Imagined
Language
Readers
Lives
Actual
Writers
Lies
Reader
More quotes by Toni Morrison
It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.
Toni Morrison
I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.
Toni Morrison
Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
Toni Morrison
the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)
Toni Morrison
My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.
Toni Morrison
I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.
Toni Morrison
I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are
Toni Morrison
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.
Toni Morrison
I dream a dream that dreams back at me.
Toni Morrison
If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.
Toni Morrison
When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
Toni Morrison
Intimacy is extremely important to me and I want it to be extremely important to the readers.
Toni Morrison
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
I sang O Holy Night in a school choir. My mother came and listened to me and complimented me. So that was the high point. I cannot sing a note.
Toni Morrison
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.
Toni Morrison
I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.
Toni Morrison
Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.
Toni Morrison
The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time.
Toni Morrison
In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.
Toni Morrison
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
