Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Solitude, competitiveness and grief are the unavoidable lot of a writer only when there is no organization or network to which he… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I don't wait to be struck by lightning and I don't need certain slants of light in order to be able to… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises…… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense, but not irrational, nor naïve - because art… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic…Authors… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but of… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That's who I am. I have been writing under this other person's name. I write some… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I'm a writer in the world. I translate the confusion that I might feel, the dread that I know I feel, moving… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world's resources. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything… — 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
