Quotessence
Home / Authors / Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleKnowsWritingThinkingWorldBlackBelovedChildrenLoveMenLanguageNeedsWaySlaveryArtWantLittlesFreedomMean

Famous Toni Morrison Quotes

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.”

WritingRaceToni Morrison
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“I didn't plan on either children or writing. Once I realized that writing satisfied me in some enormous way, I had to make adjustments. The writing was always marginal in terms of time when the children were small. But it was major in terms of my head. I always thought that women could do a lot of things. All the women I knew did nine or ten things at one time. I always understood that women worked, they went to church, they managed their houses, they managed somebody else's houses, they raised their children, they raised somebody else's children, they taught. I wouldn't say it's not hard, but why wouldn't it be? All important things are hard.”

WritingArtFeminism
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book -- leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity.”

WorldWritingLittlesHas BeensI CanBookSometimesDoneOrderImaginationMy OwnDoorsPositionLeavingClosingAmbiguityArticulationReinterpretation
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“...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
Create image

“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
Create image

“I think being an editor really helped me take other people's notes on my writing. I'd get a note like 'It's too wet' or 'The first couple chapters are good, but then the rest of the pages were so wet that they were completely illegible' or 'Did you dip this in Sprite? This smells like Sprite. Why would you dip your novel in Sprite?' And instead of pushing back, I'd listen. That's an incredibly important skill for a young writer to have.”

PeopleThinkingWritingFirstsImportantYoungNovelCoupleSkillsPagesNotesSmellPushingEditorsWetChaptersDipYoung WritersPushing Back
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.”

IfsKnowsWritingDoeI CanBookCharacterHappensMovingLiteratureThings HappenDataHappy Endings
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

IfsWantInspirationalWritingBookHappinessReadingAttitudeWrittenOptimismReading BooksCreative WritingBook ReadingWriters And WritingBook WritingWritten WordBooks And ReadingWriting By WritersGreat WritingReading And WritingAfrican American WomenStory WritingWriting StoriesCreativity And WritingWriters ReadingWriting And ReadingJoy Of ReadingAspiring WritersInspiring WritingReading WritingStory WritersBooks For KidsReading For KidsWriting From Famous AuthorsWriting ShortReading Good BooksPleasure Of ReadingShort WritingSuccessful WritingWriters And Poets
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.”

ThinkingWorldWritingMindKindWarCertainReadingPeaceParticularActivityMercyAbsenceSurrenderPassiveStatus QuoOpen MindUbuntuVigilanceWarrantsReading Writing
Book:The Dancing Mind
Create 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 get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it-and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWritingMindFirstsI CanMatterShowsMinutesCoupleScaredSentencesAgain And AgainBeginning Writers
Book:What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction
Create image

“Of course I'm a black writer... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”

WritingAbleCoursesLiteratureBlackTermAcceptingOughtEqualAcknowledgeLatinPotCategoriesMeltingLatin AmericaMelting PotAmerican WriterLatin American
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.”

IfsWritingDoeHelpingHandsHappensTermTakenEffectsProjectsBest ThingsPrizeZeroContractsInterferePublishersPrivate LifeSeriousnessIntimidatingNobelNobel Prize
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image