Quotes from Toni Morrison

All he did from freshman year through sophomore was react -- sneer, laugh, dismiss, find fault, demean -- a young man's version of critical thinking.

Well, if a man don't HAVE a chance, then he has to TAKE a chance!

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.

Not know it was hard;knowing it was harder

Tough shit, buddy. Your tough shit...

I am Beloved and she is mine. I see her take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing.

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

And in the night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded into my room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. So when I think of Autumn, I think of someone with hands who does not want me to die.

she tackled the problem of trying to decide how she wanted to live and what was valuable to her. 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?

And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

They shoot the white girl first.

It comforts everybody to think of all Negroes as dirt poor, and to regard those who were not, who earned good money and kept it, as some kind of shameful miracle. White people liked that idea because Negroes with money and sense made them nervous. Colored people liked it because, in those days, they trusted poverty, believed it was a virtue and a sure sign of honesty. Too much money had a whiff of evil and somebody else's blood.