I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I don't work. I keep telling people I'm unemployed. And I don't wash dishes, and I don't wash clothes, and I don't… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Anything I have ever learned of any consequence, I have learned from Black people. I have never been bored by any Black… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
This is really skin privilege, the ranking of color in terms of its closeness to white people or white-skinned people and its… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
In my mother's church, everybody read the Bible and it was mostly about music. My mother had the most beautiful voice I… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Listen, baby, people do funny things. Specially us. The cards are stacked against us and just trying to stay in the game,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Two parents can't raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community - everybody - to raise a child.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
It's always seemed to me that black people's grace has been with what they do with language. In Lorrain, Ohio, when I… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Sometimes Joyce is hilarious. I read Finnegans Wake after graduate school and I had the great good fortune of reading it without… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Black people's music is in a class by itself and always has been. There's nothing like it. The reason for that is… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
All the books that were being published by African-American guys were saying 'screw whitey', or some variation of that. Not the scholars… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I think being an editor really helped me take other people's notes on my writing. I'd get a note like 'It's too… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Home is memory, home is your history, home is where you work. Some people want to abandon it and become truly local.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.” — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I'm losing the definition now of politics. I sort of don't know what that is anymore. People say politically correct, I don't… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it? — Toni Morrison Copy Share
There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had… — Toni Morrison Copy Share
If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you. — Toni Morrison Copy Share
“You looked at them and wondered why the were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that… — Toni Morrison Copy Share
All she saw, down in the cellar well beneath the stoop, was a light yellow feather with a tip of green. And she had… — Toni Morrison Copy Share
For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share
“Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's.” — Toni Morrison Copy Share
“You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share
My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not… — Toni Morrison Copy Share
“She was fierce in the presence of death, heroic even, as she was at no other time. Its threat gave her direction, clarity, audacity.” — Toni Morrison Copy Share
