The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. The novel takes place in Lorain, Ohio, and tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grows up during the years following the Great Depression. Profoundly inspirational The Bluest Eye quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.
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Famous The Bluest Eye Quotes
Love is never any better than the lover. — Claudia MacTeer
Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon. — The Bluest Eye
I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. — Claudia
Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window sign – all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. Here, they said, this is beautiful, and if you are on this day worthy you may have it. pp. – — The Bluest Eye
There is really nothing more to say—except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how. — Claudia
Pauline and Cholly loved each other. He seemed to relish her company and even to enjoy her country ways and lack of knowledge about city things. He talked with her about her foot and asked, when they walked through the town or in the fields, if she were tired. Instead of ignoring her infirmity, pretending it was not there, he made it seem like something special and endearing. For the first time Pauline felt that her bad foot was an asset. And he did touch her, firmly but gently, just as she had dreamed. But minus the gloom of setting suns and lonely river banks. She was secure and grateful; he was kind and lively. She had not known there was so much laughter in the world.- — The Bluest Eye
They lived there because they were poor and black, … stayed … because they believed they were ugly. — The Bluest Eye
All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. — Claudia
Dandelions. A dart of affection leaps out from her to them. But they do not look at her and do not send love back. She thinks, They are ugly. They are weeds. Preoccupied with that revelation, she trips on the sidewalk crack. Anger stirs and wakes in her; it opens its mouth, and like a hot-mouthed puppy, laps up the dredges of her shame. Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. — The Bluest Eye
In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap….She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen. — The Bluest Eye
White kids; his mother did not like him to play with n*gg*rs. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and n*gg*rs. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; n*gg*rs were dirty and loud. — The Bluest Eye
We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth. — The Bluest Eye
I felt a need for someone to want the black baby … to counteract the … love of white baby dolls. — Claudia MacTeer
When the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce … We are wrong … but it doesn’t matter. — Claudia MacTeer
Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall 1941. — Claudia
So she became, and her process of becoming was like most of ours: she developed a hatred for things that mystified or obstructed her; acquired virtues that were easy to maintain; assigned herself a role in the scheme of things; and harked back to simpler times for gratification. — The Bluest Eye
In those days, Cholly was truly free. Abandoned in a junk heap by his mother, rejected for a crap game by his father, there was nothing more to lose. — The Bluest Eye
They slipped in and out of the box of peeling gray, making no stir in the neighborhood, no sound in the labor force, and no wave in the mayors office. Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality – collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other. — The Bluest Eye
It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different…Pretty eyes. Pretty blue eyes. Big blue pretty eyes. — The Bluest Eye
But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how. — Claudia MacTeer
The master had said, ‘You are ugly people.’ They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. — The Bluest Eye
We … took as our own the … most obvious, of our white masters’ characteristics, … their worst. — Soaphead Church
Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. — Claudia MacTeer
The familiar violence rose in me. Her calling Mrs. Breedlove Polly, when even Pecola called her mother Mrs.Breedlove seemed reason enough to scratch her. — Claudia
We loved him. Even after what came later, there was no bitterness in our memory of him. — The Bluest Eye
He laughed the grown-up getting-ready-to-lie laugh. A heh-heh we knew well. — Claudia MacTeer
If there is somebody with bluer eyes than mine, then maybe there is somebody with the bluest eyes. The bluest eyes in the whole world. That’s just too bad, isn’t it? Please help me look. No. — Pecola
I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die. — Claudia MacTeer
Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty. A surge of love and understanding swept through him, but was quickly replaced by anger. Anger that he was powerless to help her. Of all the wishes people had brought him – money, love, revenge – this seemed to him the most poignant and the one most deserving of fulfillment. A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. — The Bluest Eye
What … would earn him his own respect, that would … allow him to accept her love? — The Bluest Eye
I thought about the baby that everyone wanted dead, and saw it very clearly. It was in a dark, wet place, its head covered with Os of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes, the flared nose, kissing-thick lips, and the living, breathing silk of black skin. No synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble-blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth. More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live – just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals. — The Bluest Eye
It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth. They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds – cooled – and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path. — The Bluest Eye
This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. — The Bluest Eye
She bore him like a crown of thorns, and her children like a cross. — The Bluest Eye
To find out … how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer. — The Bluest Eye
Mrs. Breedlove was not interested in Christ the Redeemer, but rather Christ the Judge. — The Bluest Eye
[Pecola beat] the air, a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach – could not even see – but which filled the valleys of the mind. — The Bluest Eye
Cholly, moving faster, looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do it – hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much. The flashlight wormed its way into his guts and turned the sweet taste of muscadine into rotten fetid bile. He stared at Darlenes hands covering her face in the moon and lamplight. They looked like baby claws. — The Bluest Eye
Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike. — The Bluest Eye
I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute! — The Bluest Eye
