Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world's resources. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Solitude, competitiveness and grief are the unavoidable lot of a writer only when there is no organization or network to which he… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I'm a writer in the world. I translate the confusion that I might feel, the dread that I know I feel, moving… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises…… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“I think long and carefully about what novels ought to do. They should clarify the roles that have become obscured; they ought… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“But the important thing is that I don't do anything else. I avoid social life normally associated with publishing. I don't go… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
“A writer's life and work are not a gift to humankind; they are its necessity.” — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know. — 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
The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it.… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share 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… — 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
I feel like today we always glorify the young, just-plucked-from-college writer. But it's much harder to start writing later, in middle age,… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know. And I said they don't know nothing.… — 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
