Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931) is an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher, and professor emeritus at Princeton University.
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.
There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.
Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can't even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what?. . . The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don't wrap him up. They let him keep his head high, free.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
you got two feet, Sethe, not four. " he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; tactless and quiet.
You are your best thing
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself
The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence.
Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.
You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.
How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down. ’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.
I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?
Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live
She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.
Isolation, you know, carries the seeds of its own destruction because as times change, other things seep in.
The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.
Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.