Toni Morrison

“The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does mo...”

“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at...”

“I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary...”

“Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.”

“I'm a Midwesterner, and everyone in Ohio is excited. I'm also a New Yorker, and a New Jerseyan, and an American, plus I'm an African-American, and a woman. I know it seems like I'm spreading...”

“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,...”

“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the on...”

“Jump, if you want to, ‘cause I’ll catch you, girl. I’ll catch you “fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I’ll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I’m not saying this beca...”

“You have pissed your last in this house . . . and I don't make velvet roses anymore.”

“I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such 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.”

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

“Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.”

“I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons.”

“Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.”

“I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes.”

“The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.”

“A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.”

“Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.”

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