Toni Morrison quotes

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence.

Writing before dawn began as a necessity.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.

I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.

I entered this hall pleasantly haunted by those who have entered it before me.

Good editors are really the third eye. Cool. Dispassionate. They don't love you or your work; for me that is what is valuable — not compliments.

As a matter of fact, while I was at Random House I never said I was a writer.

I wanted to give back something. I wasn't marching. I didn't go to anything. I didn't join anything. But I could make sure there was a published record of those who did march and did put themselves on the line.

124 was spiteful.

It was not a story to pass on.

Please forgive me. I loved you all.

They called it Not Doctor Street

But was it really like that?

listen for truth in timbre

My mother danced all night and Roberta's was sick.

The kitchen woman with legs like parentheses.

Things are not right. The wrong food is always with the wrong people. Maybe that's why I got into waitress work later—to match up the right people with the right food.

Now we were behaving like sisters separated for much too long. Those four short months were nothing in time.

Actually my sign didn't make sense without Roberta's.

I didn't kick her; I didn't join in with the gar girls and kick that lady, but I sure did want to.

In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.

It is called the suburbs now, but when black people lived there it was called the Bottom.

Otherwise the pain would escape him even though the laughter was part of the pain.