“Gather up your loins, daughter. You named Lillian Florence Jones after my mother. A toughter lady never lived. Find your talent and… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For” — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that?Eight children… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
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
The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“But the truth was she could not bear to be around thier undead,healthy children.More than envy she felt that each laughing redcheeked… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“She thought it would dry his tears and give her some satisfaction as well. It could have worked, I suppose, but the… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I know it's trash: just another story made up to scare wicked females and correct unruly children. But it's all I have.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
One of the monstrous things that slavery in this country caused was the breakup of families. I mean, physical labor, horrible; beatings,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“I'll tend to her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more except… — 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… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown. In my heart it… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I don't think one parent can raise a child. I don't think two parents can raise a child. You really need the… — 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
Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Beloved, she my daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me of her own free will and I don't have to… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“A daughter is a woman that cares about where she come from and takes care of them that took care of her.” — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth. — 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
“What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“I don't care what she is. Grown don't mean a thing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they looked like if alive, fact… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
When you think of sexual liberation, which women wanted to have or not have children, which is the choice, not a command,… — 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
Occasionally, as children, we might figure out how to call somebody a name, and they would figure out how to call us.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
The children - I call them children when they're under 18 - are hungry for that love. The drugs are just a… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“The plight (and resistance) of children living in a wholly commercialized environment that equates “entertainment” with happiness, products with status, “things” with… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never… — 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
