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Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison Quotes

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Famous Toni Morrison Quotes

“If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.”

IfsThinkingWayWritingIdeasOrderMagicMysteryReaderDiscoveryAdvantageValuableAweReverenceDisplaySelectionTextureAccompanySubtext
Author:Toni Morrison
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“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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“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.”

WayRealityFoundConsciousnessPiecesInformationMembersTinyImpressionCellsBelongingFragmentsCollectingQuiltsPatchworkPatchwork Quilt
Author:Toni Morrison
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“But Jude,' she would say, 'you knew me. All those days and years, Jude, you knew me. My ways and my hands and how my stomach folded and how we tried to get Mickey to nurse and how about that time when the landlord said...but you said...and I cried, Jude. You knew me and had listened to the things I said in the night, and heard me in the bathroom and laughed at my raggedy girdle and I laughed too because I knew you too, Jude. So how could you leave me when you knew me?”

WayYearsSaidHandsNightHeardMy WayStomachLaughedNurseCriedBathroomLeaving MeMickeyLandlordGirdles
Book:Sula: a Novel
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“In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”

WayArtMightFormArtistImaginationHalfDangerousDisciplineActivityConsequencePaintCuriosityMetaphorStringsIdleEquationsClayCravingOther HalfWhimRestlessnessPreoccupationStrangeness
Author:Toni Morrison
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“She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.”

PeopleWayLifeNeedsLeftRoomsParticularComfortableMajorsConsequenceTownsHotelSchemesConvenienceConvenientHotel RoomsWhere You LiveShe Left Me
Author:Toni Morrison
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“I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess it up how?' " 'Forgot it.' " 'Forgot?' " 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.”

IfsWorldWayWantSaidI CanWishCausesCrazyStreetsMinesAgreeYeahFaultsMessRanLaughedUp And DownCan't ChangeMessed UpHairdresser
Author:Toni Morrison
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