Toni Morrison

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

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”

“Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.”

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

“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”