Toni Morrison Quotes About Love And Life That Will Provide You Ultimate Strength

“You are your best thing.” ― Toni Morrison

“If you want to fly, you have to give up everything that weighs you down.” ― Toni Morrison

“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.” ― Toni Morrison

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” ― Toni Morrison

“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” ― Toni Morrison

“I think that our expectations of women are very low. If women just stand up straight for thirty days, everybody goes, Oh! How brave!” ― Toni Morrison

“Nagging. Poison. Gossip. Sneaking around instead of confrontation.” ― Toni Morrison

“It was a silly age, twenty-five; too old for teenaged dreaming, too young for settling down. Every corner was a possibility and a dead end.” ― Toni Morrison

“In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” ― Toni Morrison

“Racists always try to make you think they are the majority, but they never are. It’s always the minority against all of the poor, all of the women, or all of the blacks.” ― Toni Morrison

“We never shape the world… the world shapes us.” ― Toni Morrison

“You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.” ― Toni Morrison

“You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.” ― Toni Morrison

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind–wrapped tight like skin.” ― Toni Morrison

“Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every god damn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.” ― Toni Morrison

“A good man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to. Don’t matter. You find one, stay there. You see a scary one, make tracks.” ― Toni Morrison

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

“I dream a dream that dreams back at me.” ― Toni Morrison

“Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder.” ― Toni Morrison

“They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations.” ― Toni Morrison

“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.” ― Toni Morrison

“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.” ― Toni Morrison

“Writing is really a way of thinking–not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.” ― Toni Morrison

“Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a god-damn axe. Chopping, hacking, busting every god damn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.” ― Toni Morrison

“She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of colour, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.” ― Toni Morrison

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.” ― Toni Morrison

“All paradises, all utopias, are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.” ― Toni Morrison

“If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away.” ― Toni Morrison

“Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweet tooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.” ― Toni Morrison

“A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.” ― Toni Morrison

“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.” ― Toni Morrison

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” ― Toni Morrison

“Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.” ― Toni Morrison

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

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

“There is really nothing more to say except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.” ― Toni Morrison

“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.” ― Toni Morrison

“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.” ― Toni Morrison

“He wants to put his story next to hers.” ― Toni Morrison

“It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.” ― Toni Morrison

“Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” ― Toni Morrison