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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

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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
Sweat
Appear
Careful
Language
Must
Time
Effortless
Provocative
Suggest

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I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.
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Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.
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Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.
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Beauty was not simply something to behold it was something one could do.
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I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.
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Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.
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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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Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.
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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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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.
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There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.
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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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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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What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.
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What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
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And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
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Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.
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When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.
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Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.
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