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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
Sexist
Racist
Sexism
Mutual
Languages
Racism
Exchange
Knowledge
Mastery
Language
Cannot
Typical
Theistic
Ideas
Permit
Policing
Encourage
More quotes by Toni Morrison
We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.
Toni Morrison
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
I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.
Toni Morrison
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
Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.
Toni Morrison
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.
Toni Morrison
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.
Toni Morrison
Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.
Toni Morrison
A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.
Toni Morrison
Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.
Toni Morrison
Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
Toni Morrison
I like marriage. The idea.
Toni Morrison
The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.
Toni Morrison
If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.
Toni Morrison
When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.
Toni Morrison
Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.
Toni Morrison
Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.
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
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone the flowers appear on the earth the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
Toni Morrison
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?
Toni Morrison