If there's a book that you want to read,but hasn't been written yet,then you must write it. — 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
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. — 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
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
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it… — 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 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 habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not… — 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
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 write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way… — 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
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
One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is… — 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
Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been… — 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
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
“Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but of… — 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
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
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to… — 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
If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic. — 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
The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to. — 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
My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger. — 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
There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write,… — 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
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
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
“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
When I write, I don't translate for white readers… Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If… — Toni Morrison Copy Share Image
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
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
