Quotes By Toni Morrison

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.

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.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

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.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.

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

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.

You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.

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.

I like marriage. The idea.

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

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

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

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

One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.

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

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

My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.

For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.

When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.