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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

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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
Legs
Figure
Figures
Ought
Somebody
Use
Negro
Long
Ties
Way
Beloved

More quotes by Toni Morrison

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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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Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.
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Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.
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Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses - young loving.
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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.
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Maybe [I care about language] because I'm an editor, maybe because I'm picky, but it's all we got, don't shrink it. Don't dumb it out, make it little.
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All important things are hard.
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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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If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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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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Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability.
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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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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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I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.
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Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.
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When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.
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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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The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.
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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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I thought the whole world was like Lorain.
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