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Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

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
Measured
Black
Women
Human
Humans
Touchstone
Touchstones

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Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable.
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Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s it's choosing the ones you want.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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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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My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.
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I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.
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It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.
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If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.
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A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.
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guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.
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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
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What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
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I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
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You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
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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.
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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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