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Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not, permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

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
Racist
Sexist
Mutual
Sexism
Racism
Languages
Knowledge
Exchange
Language
Mastery
Cannot
Typical
Ideas
Permit
Theistic
Encourage
Policing

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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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When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?
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The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
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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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Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
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He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers. ‘Me? Me?
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I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.
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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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I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.
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Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.
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The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean.
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Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
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Love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.
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How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.
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Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards.
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I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?
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Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
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Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
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