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Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison Quotes

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Famous Toni Morrison Quotes

“...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.”

MenWritingBlackDifferencesWhiteFemaleMalesCombinationBlack And WhiteWhite ManBlack Women
Book:Conversations with Toni Morrison
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“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”

KnowsMenGivingMindOrderFriendshipPiecesTruthfulReal FriendsMy FriendshipOne Line FriendshipBest FriendshipFriendship DayHappy FriendshipFriendship GardenHappy Friendship DayWho Your Real Friends AreBeing A Good FriendLiterary LoveEasy FriendshipGood FriendshipNice FriendNice Friendship
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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“But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house. [...] A man ain't nothing but a man,' said Baby Suggs. 'But a son? Well now, that's somebody.”

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Author:Toni Morrison
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“Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I'll tell you where. From that little hog's gut that hangs between your legs. Well, let me tell you something... you will need more than that. I don't know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that.... You are a sad, pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man. I hope your little hog's gut stands you in good stead, and you take good care of it, because you don't have anything else.”

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Author:Toni Morrison
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“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glance of the lover’s inward eyes.”

PeopleMenEyeLove IsStupidLoversSafeWeakViolentBelovedWickedLoved OnesInwardGlancesFrozenStupid PeopleFree ManGift Of LoveWeak People
Author:Toni Morrison
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“Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon-everything belonged to the men who had the guns. . . . So you protected yourself and loved small. . . . A woman, a child, a brother-a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. . . . To get to a place where you could love anything you chose-not to need permission for desire-well now, that was freedom”

MenNeedsWellsChildrenBigsDesireEnjoyHe ManBrotherListeningMoonGunWideProtectedSplitsSunlightPermissionDirtMistGeorgiaDoveCopper
Author:Toni Morrison
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“The men began to trade tales of atrocities, first stories they had heard, then those they'd witnessed, and finally the things that had happened to themselves. A litany of personal humiliation, outrage, and anger turned sicklelike back to themselves as humor. They laughed then, uproariously, about the speed with which they had run, the pose they had assumed, the ruse they had invented to escape or decrease some threat to their manliness, their humanness. All but Empire State, who stood, broom in hand and drop-lipped, with the expression of a very intelligent ten-year-old.”

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Book:Sula
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