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Writing Quotes by Toni Morrison

59 Writing quotes by Toni Morrison

All Writing quotes Toni Morrison’s page

Toni Morrison explains that a writer must stay open, never locking ideas into a closed box. She says she writes all over her house, with a thesaurus on the bed and notes scattered everywhere, showing that writing can be a daily habit. She also reminds us that inspiration comes as a compulsion, and that writer’s block is a real pause that deserves respect.

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

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Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

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The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

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I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

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As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer.

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“A writer's life and work are not a gift to humankind; they are its necessity.”

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What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

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

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The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

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The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test…

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I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

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If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

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Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it…

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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,…

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People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't…

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I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at…

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The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know. And I said they don't know nothing.…

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The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the…

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The writing is - I'm free from pain. It's the place where I live; it's where I have control; it's where nobody…

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One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is…

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Sex is difficult to write about because it's just not sexy enough. The only way to write about it is not to…

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I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your…

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I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female…

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Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been…

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“I didn't plan on either children or writing. Once I realized that writing satisfied me in some enormous way, I had to…

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“But the important thing is that I don't do anything else. I avoid social life normally associated with publishing. I don't go…

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“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for hourse and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods…

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There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace…

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“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to…

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Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American…

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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…

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When you first start writing-and I think it's true for a lot of beginning writers-you're scared to death that if you don't…

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I type in one place, but I write all over the house.

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My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

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Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

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I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.

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The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not…

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There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write,…

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I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it.…

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When I write, I don't translate for white readers… Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If…

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More by Toni Morrison

Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?

There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had…

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

“Not know it was hard;knowing it was harder”

“Didn’t everything on God’s earth have or acquire defense?”

If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you.

“You looked at them and wondered why the were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that…

All she saw, down in the cellar well beneath the stoop, was a light yellow feather with a tip of green. And she had…

For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end.…

“To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay”

“Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's.”

“You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself,…

“There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks”

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not…

“She was fierce in the presence of death, heroic even, as she was at no other time. Its threat gave her direction, clarity, audacity.”