Quote

Occasionally, as children, we might figure out how to call somebody a name, and they would figure out how to call us. But it wasn't - it was so light. It was so fluffy. I didn't really have a strong awareness of segregation and the separation of races until I left Lorain, Ohio.

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
Children
Names
Occasionally
Really
Call
Separation
Would
Race
Figure
Strong
Figures
Left
Awareness
Fluffy
Didn
Wasn
Segregation
Light
Name
Ohio
Might
Somebody
Races

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Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing.
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Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
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The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
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Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
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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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We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
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Gimme hate, Lord,” he whimpered. “I’ll take hate any day. But don’t give me love. I can’t take no more love, Lord. I can’t carry it...It’s too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain’t it heavy? Jesus? Ain’t love heavy?
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For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.
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In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
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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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If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
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A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.
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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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What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us.
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Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
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What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
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You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.
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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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Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s it's choosing the ones you want.
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