Thinking Quotes by Toni Morrison

You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.

— Toni Morrison

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

— Toni Morrison

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

— Toni Morrison

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

— Toni Morrison

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

— Toni Morrison

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

— Toni Morrison

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen…

— Toni Morrison

I don't think I knew any of my father's friends - male friends - by their real names. I remember them only…

— Toni Morrison

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

Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature.

— Toni Morrison

I guess I'm depressed. I don't know. I can't explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part…

— Toni Morrison

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

— Toni Morrison

When I'm not creating or focusing on something I can imagine or invent, I think I go back over my life -…

— Toni Morrison

My home is such a powerfully imaginative place that the space is almost irrelevant. I think the house I live at on…

— Toni Morrison

Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and…

— Toni Morrison

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do…

— Toni Morrison

Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is…

— Toni Morrison

When you think of sexual liberation, which women wanted to have or not have children, which is the choice, not a command,…

— Toni Morrison

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride…

— Toni Morrison

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

— Toni Morrison

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

Sometimes Joyce is hilarious. I read Finnegans Wake after graduate school and I had the great good fortune of reading it without…

— Toni Morrison

When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made…

— Toni Morrison

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

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…

— Toni Morrison

Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting…

— Toni Morrison

What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the…

— Toni Morrison

I'm losing the definition now of politics. I sort of don't know what that is anymore. People say politically correct, I don't…

— Toni Morrison

It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent…

— Toni Morrison

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

I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal…

— Toni Morrison

“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

What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so…

— Toni Morrison

“...the City is what they want it to be: thriftless, warm, scary and full of amiable strangers. No wonder they forget pebbly…

— Toni Morrison

I think there's data, and then there's information that comes from data, and then there's knowledge that comes from information. And then,…

— Toni Morrison

My metaphor is that evil always has a top hat and a cape, and goodness is over there in the corner. For…

— Toni Morrison

Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I…

— Toni Morrison

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…

— Toni Morrison

Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down,…

— Toni Morrison