My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black.… — 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
There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody… — 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
Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her… — 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
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
And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that… — 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
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
My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
My daddy's face is a study. Winter moves into it and presides there. His eyes become a cliff of snow threatening to… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who… — 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
Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. — 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
Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it? — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
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 Image
If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
