Toni Morrison started her life on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, then her parents moved to get escape from the problems of southern racism. Morrison is the second of four children. Her father’s family, in particular, had faced a great deal of discrimination. Due to these bitter memories and the racial troubles she endured during her childhood, she maintained a strong distrust of whites throughout her lifetime. Morrison graduated high school with honors in 1949 and went on to attend Howard University in Washington D.C. Morrison was one of the most famous black writers from the United States of America. She got Nobel Prize for literature in 1993 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She was known as one of the most crucial novelists of the twentieth century. Toni Morrison quotes are inspirational, we need to read inspiring quotes to motivate ourselves to do well in life.
36 Toni Morrison Quotes
- “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
- “Something that is loved is never lost.” Toni Morrison
- “Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you?” Toni Morrison
- “Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.” Toni Morrison
- “What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?” Toni Morrison
- “Make up a story…For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light.” Toni Morrison
- “I don’t think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get.” 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
- “What difference does it make if the thing you are scared of is real or not?” Toni Morrison
- “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” Toni Morrison
- “He has double eyes. Each one a different color. A sad one that lets you look inside him, and a clear one that looks inside you.” 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. None of that is necessary.” Toni Morrison
- “Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind.” Toni Morrison
- “I’m a believer in the power of knowledge and the ferocity of beauty, so from my point of view, your life is already artful—waiting, just waiting for you to make it art.” Toni Morrison
- “A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.” Toni Morrison
- “Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.” Toni Morrison
- “Some things you forget. Other things you never do.” Toni Morrison
- “Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.” Toni Morrison
- “If you find a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Toni Morrison
- “If you can’t imagine it, you can’t have it,” Toni Morrison
- “Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.” Toni Morrison
- “No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.” Toni Morrison
- “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.” Toni Morrison
- “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” Toni Morrison
- “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Toni Morrison
- “We don’t need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer’s movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious.” Toni Morrison
- “Everything I see or do, the weather and the water, buildings. . . . everything actual is an advantage when I am writing. It is like a menu or a giant toolbox, and I can pick and choose what I want. When I am not writing, or more important, when I have nothing on my mind for a book, then I see chaos, confusion, disorder.” Toni Morrison
- “Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams, and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.” Toni Morrison
- “Today is always here,’ said Sethe. ‘Tomorrow, never.” Toni Morrison
- “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” Toni Morrison
- “As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” Toni Morrison
- “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” Toni Morrison
- “Women’s rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.” Toni Morrison
- “You are your best thing.” 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
