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
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in. — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
