Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931) is an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher, and professor emeritus at Princeton University.
Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.
Love just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event.
At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough.
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.
Black people's music is in a class by itself and always has been. There's nothing like it. The reason for that is because it was not tampered with by white people. It was not on the media. It was not anywhere except where black people were. And it is one of the art forms in which black people decided what is good in it. Nobody told them. What surfaced and what floated to the top, were the giants and the best.
I feel like today we always glorify the young, just-plucked-from-college writer. But it's much harder to start writing later, in middle age, struggling on a book around a full-time job and family.
The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.
All important things are hard.
I like marriage. The idea.
You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.
Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.
Please don't settle for happiness. It's not good enough. Of course you deserve it, but if that's all you have in mind - happiness - I want to suggest to you that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice - that's more than a barren life. It's a trivial one.
I don't think one parent can raise a child. I don't think two parents can raise a child. You really need the whole village.
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.
You looking good. " "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.
Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.
I don't wait to be struck by lightning and I don't need certain slants of light in order to be able to write.
You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.
I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.
We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.