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Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison Quotes

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Famous Toni Morrison Quotes

“And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.”

ThinkingWayWellsKindMayStillsMovingNightBlackDarkTalkingBreakFiveSkyColorSixEmptyGreenFingersStormJust OneBottlesRainbowLettuceCucumbersGrasshoppersPitch Black
Author:Toni Morrison
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“Alice thought, No. It wasn't the War and the disgruntled veterans; it wasn't the droves and droves of colored people flocking to paychecks and streets full of themselves. It was the music. The dirty, get-on-down music the women sang and the men played and both danced to, close and shamelesss or apart and wild...It made you do unwise disorderly things. Just hearing it was like violating the law.”

PeopleMenMadeWarLawStreetsJazzHearingDirtyVeteranPaychecksUnwiseDisgruntled
Author:Toni Morrison
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“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

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Author:Toni Morrison
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“How come it can’t fly no better than a chicken?’ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.’ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.”

GivingStuffToo MuchGiving UpSpreadVanityChickensTailsOblivionJewelryHoodPeacockFlashyMilkman
Book:Sula
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“All she saw, down in the cellar well beneath the stoop, was a light yellow feather with a tip of green. And she had never named him. Had called him "my parrot" all these years. "My parrot." "Love you. "Love you." Did the dogs get him? Or did he get the message - that she said, "My parrot" and he said, "Love you," and she had never said it back or even taken the trouble to name him - and manage somehow to fly away on wings that had not soared for six years.”

YearsWellsSaidLightNamesTakenSawsTroubleLove YouDogSixMessagesGreenWingsManageYellowFeathersStoopsCellarsParrotsFly Away
Author:Toni Morrison
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“True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.”

WellsMayChildrenRealityJobsFallBlackAcceptingPrideProfoundMatesBlack WomenFall BackHouseworkDesolationWhitenessDrudgeryMaleness
Book:What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction
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“All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.”

ThinkingBelieveMadeDreamPainBeautifulUsedFeltSilencePovertyGuiltSimplicityGenerousNightmareSense Of HumorWakingUglinessEloquentAwkwardness
Book:The Bluest Eye
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“This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.”

WorldHumansDoeMatterArtistHuman BeingsPositionFindingsComplexesGenreComplexityVillainOriginalityConsistentlyFacetsMultiplicityOrigin Of LifeComplexity Of Human
Author:Toni Morrison
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“Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think if, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.”

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Author:Toni Morrison
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“...fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)”

IfsDoeHas BeensFactsMotherNiceWifeFavorsLike MeFaithfulMapsGood FriendLoving MotherFaithful Wife
Book:Beloved
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“Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.”

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Author:Toni Morrison
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