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.

Toni Morrison

Categorized in : Ideas Impact Sorority

I don't do the things other people call "play." by Toni Morrison

I don't do the things other people call "play."

play people

And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.

wine dream book

Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the ea... by Toni Morrison

Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.

earth children people

When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?

differences alive needs

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.

writing discovery thinking

He wants to put his story next to hers. by Toni Morrison

He wants to put his story next to hers.

next stories want

The men began to trade tales of atrocities, first stories they had heard, then those they'd witnessed, and finally the things that had happened to themselves. A litany of personal humiliation, outrage, and anger turned sicklelike back to themselves as humor. They laughed then, uproariously, about the speed with which they had run, the pose they had assumed, the ruse they had invented to escape or decrease some threat to their manliness, their humanness. All but Empire State, who stood, broom in hand and drop-lipped, with the expression of a very intelligent ten-year-old.

intelligent running men

Much handled things are always soft(27). by Toni Morrison

Much handled things are always soft(27).

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love.

love country children

I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me. by Toni Morrison

I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me.

worthy knows book

My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they... by Toni Morrison

My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.

delightful children people

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

bearing-witness circumstances art

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

vitality language lying

Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.

slavery arrogance war

Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.

information real race

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away by Toni Morrison

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away

necks iron circles

Beginning 'Beloved' with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city.

cities numbers giving

The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday... by Toni Morrison

The screams of a hurt woman were indistinguishable from everyday traffic.

scream everyday hurt

I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now. Novels are always inquiries for me.

inquiry trying looks

Lonely was much better than alone. by Toni Morrison

Lonely was much better than alone.

lonely