Toni Morrison

"Something that is loved is never lost."

- Toni Morrison

"Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all."

- Toni Morrison

"Don't ever think I fell for you or fell over you. I didn't fall in love; I rose in it."

- Toni Morrison

"I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was 12 or 13. He said, ‘You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it.’ And I said, ‘But, Daddy, no one’s going to see it!’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but I know it’s there.’"

- Toni Morrison

"She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."

- Toni Morrison

"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't no love at all."

- Toni Morrison

"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."

- Toni Morrison

"A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves—a special kind of double."

- Toni Morrison

"The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being."

- Toni Morrison

"How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon?"

- Toni Morrison

"Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done."

- Toni Morrison

"I don’t foresee, or want, a color-blind, race-neutral environment. The nineteenth century was the time for that. It’s too late now. Our race-inflected culture not only exists, it thrives. The question is whether it thrives as a virus or a bountiful harvest of possibilities."

- Toni Morrison

"But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day."

- Toni Morrison

"The function of freedom is to free someone else."

- Toni Morrison

"Wanna fly, you got to give up the s — — that weighs you down."

- Toni Morrison

"You are not the work you do; you are the person you are."

- Toni Morrison

"Now no one can fault the conqueror for writing history the way he sees it, and certainly not for digesting human events and discovering their patterns according to his point of view. But we can fault him for not owning up to what his point of view is."

- Toni Morrison

"If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down."

- Toni Morrison

"In order to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down."

- Toni Morrison

"A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves —a special kind of double."

- Toni Morrison

"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it."

- Toni Morrison

"I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art."

- Toni Morrison

"Don’t let anybody, anybody convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It must be the way it ought to be."

- Toni Morrison

"I get angry about things, then go on and work."

- Toni Morrison

"If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression."

- Toni Morrison

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."

- Toni Morrison

"From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art."

- Toni Morrison

"I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies."

- Toni Morrison

"What’s the world for if you can’t make it up the way you want it?"

- Toni Morrison

"If there is a book that you want to read, but hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it."

- Toni Morrison

"If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it."

- Toni Morrison

"Art is not mere entertainment or decoration, it has meaning, and we both want and need to fathom that meaning."

- Toni Morrison

"A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity."

- Toni Morrison

"Your life is already artful- waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art."

- Toni Morrison

"If there’s a story that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it."

- Toni Morrison

"In pursuing your highest ambitions, don’t let your personal safety diminish the safety of your stepsister. In wielding the power that is deservedly yours, don’t permit it to enslave your stepsisters. Let your might and your power emanate from that place in you that is nurturing and caring."

- Toni Morrison

"You are your best thing."

- Toni Morrison

""You are your best thing.""

- Toni Morrison

"You have to give yourself permission, even when you’re doing it."

- Toni Morrison

"You are your best thing. Own this day with confidence."

- Toni Morrison

"You are your best thing"

- Toni Morrison

"A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves — a special kind of double."

- Toni Morrison

"She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order."

- Toni Morrison

"I know what every colored woman in this country is doing. . . . Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world."

- Toni Morrison

"Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind."

- Toni Morrison

"Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever."

- Toni Morrison

"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

- Toni Morrison

"If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else."

- Toni Morrison

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

- Toni Morrison

"If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it."

- Toni Morrison

"But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted, rather, to feel something on Christmas Day."

- Toni Morrison

"Nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult, with the power to fulfill my desires, taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own or to possess any object. I wanted, rather, to feel something on Christmas Day."

- Toni Morrison

"She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?"

- Toni Morrison

"At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough."

- Toni Morrison

"A man ain’t nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that’s somebody."

- Toni Morrison

"You want to fly, you have to give up the shit that weighs you down."

- Toni Morrison

"You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."

- Toni Morrison

""Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.""

- Toni Morrison

"'Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never.'"

- Toni Morrison

"What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?"

- Toni Morrison

"Make a difference about something other than yourselves."

- Toni Morrison

"Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined."

- Toni Morrison

"I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer—its dust and lowering skies."

- Toni Morrison

"Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

- Toni Morrison