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I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.

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
Writing
Readers
Reader
Respect

More quotes by Toni Morrison

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Not knowing it was hard knowing it was harder
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
Toni Morrison
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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
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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
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Jealousy we understood and thought natural... But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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Political doesn't necessarily mean you have an agenda.
Toni Morrison
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Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.
Toni Morrison
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What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?
Toni Morrison
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The seeds of destruction lie in the definition of chosen-ness and can easily blossom into bigotry. It's not inevitable but it needs constant care to avoid.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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Our ancestors are an ever widening circle of hope.
Toni Morrison
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Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission.
Toni Morrison
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A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective they are that.
Toni Morrison
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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.
Toni Morrison
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A bestseller is a book that non-book buyers buy
Toni Morrison
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Most of our lives are spent in little towns, little towns all throughout the country. That's where we live. And that's where the juices come from and that's where we made it, not made it in terms of success but made who we are.
Toni Morrison