Skip to content

World Quotes by Toni Morrison

44 World quotes by Toni Morrison

All World quotes Toni Morrison’s page

The world is described as a stage where seasons act like prima donas, each convinced they drive life. One quote reminds us that we don’t shape the world; instead it shapes us. Another thought points out that good literature often deals with political events and the changing world.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

“There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks”

Image

What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?

Image

I thought the whole world was like Lorain.

Image

We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.

Image

At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough.

Image

My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

Image

A coward with a gun is the most dangerous person in the world

Image

The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world,…

Image

In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people…

Image

So this is what insanity is. Not goofy behavior, but watching a sudden change in the world you used to know.

Image

The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the…

Image

When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay…

Image

Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world's resources.

Image

My theory is that the world is a difficult place to live in and distraction is the name of the game.

Image

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

Image

“In Tar Baby , the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity…

Image

The writing is - I'm free from pain. It's the place where I live; it's where I have control; it's where nobody…

Image

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…

Image

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

Image

“They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up…

Image

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is…

Image

Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants…

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…

Image

This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't…

Image

“Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing…

Image

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

Image

...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a…

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…

Image

I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you…

Image

In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything…

Image

If he looked into her face, he would see those haunted, loving eyes. The hauntedness would irritate him - the love would…

Image

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is…

Image

I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense, but not irrational, nor naïve - because art…

Image

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical…

Image

I'm a writer in the world. I translate the confusion that I might feel, the dread that I know I feel, moving…

Image

Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving…

Image

Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been…

Image

Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on…

Image

Evil is not interesting. What is it, chopping off someone's head? We used to do that as kids, you know, you tear…

Image

There are some very powerful contributions to knowledge in the scientific world or the legal world, but art is singular. That's why…

Image

Other authors on World

More by Toni Morrison

Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?

There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had…

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

“Not know it was hard;knowing it was harder”

“Didn’t everything on God’s earth have or acquire defense?”

If you can't count, they can cheat you. If you can't read, they can beat you.

“You looked at them and wondered why the were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that…

All she saw, down in the cellar well beneath the stoop, was a light yellow feather with a tip of green. And she had…

For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end.…

“To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay”

“Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's.”

“You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself,…

“There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks”

My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not…

“She was fierce in the presence of death, heroic even, as she was at no other time. Its threat gave her direction, clarity, audacity.”