Writer Quotes by Toni Morrison

Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

— Toni Morrison

I know that my books are worthy, which is separate from me.

— Toni Morrison

Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

— Toni Morrison

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

— Toni Morrison

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

— Toni Morrison

Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

— Toni Morrison

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

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test…

— Toni Morrison

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

— Toni Morrison

From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and…

— Toni Morrison

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

— Toni Morrison

What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

— Toni Morrison

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

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

The best part of all, the absolutely most delicious part, is finishing it and then doing it over I rewrite a lot,…

— Toni Morrison

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

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 think long and carefully about what novels ought to do. They should clarify the roles that have become obscured; they ought…

— Toni Morrison

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

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

“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

“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

Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the…

— Toni Morrison

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

Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this,…

— 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

“A writer's life and work are not a gift to humankind; they are its necessity.”

— Toni Morrison

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

— Toni Morrison

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

I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.

— 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

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

— Toni Morrison

“Solitude, competitiveness and grief are the unavoidable lot of a writer only when there is no organization or network to which he…

— Toni Morrison

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

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

“Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this,…

— Toni Morrison

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

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

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