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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
Figures
Ought
Somebody
Use
Negro
Long
Ties
Way
Beloved
Legs
Figure

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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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Oppressive language does more than represent violence it is violence does more than represent the limits of knowledge it limits knowledge.
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Not knowing it was hard knowing it was harder
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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. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.
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The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.
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I began to realize that this idea of the lighter the better and the darker the worse was really - had an impact on sororities, on friendships, on all sorts of things, and it was stunning to me.
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You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.
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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....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.
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Anything I have ever learned of any consequence, I have learned from Black people. I have never been bored by any Black person, ever.
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Anything dead coming back to life hurts.
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The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.
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And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.
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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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Love is never any better than the lover.
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To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.
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As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer.
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Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.
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A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
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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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What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?
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