Toni Morrison Quotes

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

Please don’t settle for happiness. It’s not good enough. Of course you deserve it, but if that’s all you have in mind – happiness – I want to suggest to you that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice – that’s more than a barren life. It’s a trivial one.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

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

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.

I get angry about things, then go on and work.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race – scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct… it has a social function, racism.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom. Like art.

Everything I’ve ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.

Women’s rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.