Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. Profoundly inspirational Toni Morrison quotes will make you look at life differently and help you live a meaningful life.
If you’re searching for inspirational quotes by famous authors that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes by Wendell Berry, best Zora Neale Hurston quotes and greatest Shel Silverstein quotes.
Famous Toni Morrison Quotes
We live in the world the whole world. Separating us, isolating us, that’s always been their weapon. Isolation kills generations. 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
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined. Toni Morrison
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything. Toni Morrison
My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
If you can’t imagine it, you can’t have it. Toni Morrison
A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people. Toni Morrison
You are your best thing. Toni Morrison
Nothing could be counted on in a world, where even when you were a solution you were a problem.Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. Toni Morrison
Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don’t mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old boy network. Toni Morrison
Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It’s more provocative to me and more stimulating to me. Toni Morrison
The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. Toni Morrison
We never shape the world the world shapes us. 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
What’s fair ain’t necessarily right. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
What you do to children matters. And they might never forget. Toni Morrison
There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people. Toni Morrison
You just can’t mishandle creatures and expect success. 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
Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. Toni Morrison
There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people. Toni Morrison
Oppressive language does more than represent violence, it is violence does more than represent the limits of knowledge, it limits knowledge. Toni Morrison
Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time. Toni Morrison
I’m a believer in the power of knowledge and the ferocity of beauty, so from my point of view, your life is already artful waiting, just waiting for you to make it art. Toni Morrison
Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth. Toni Morrison
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Toni Morrison
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? Toni Morrison
If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it. Toni Morrison
My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren’t my children. Toni Morrison
I don’t think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get. Toni Morrison
Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It’s truly unbelievable. Toni Morrison
Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do. Toni Morrison
I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. Toni Morrison
Correct what you can. Learn from what you can’t. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
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. 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. Toni Morrison
When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation. Toni Morrison
The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book. Toni Morrison
The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
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 one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt, and because, what difference does it make? Toni Morrison
Everything I’ve ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it. Toni Morrison
You can do some rather extraordinary things if that is what you really believe. Toni Morrison
Some things you forget. Other things you never do. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
I wanted to separate color from race. Toni Morrison
I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. Toni Morrison
I get angry about things, then go on and work. Toni Morrison
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war. Toni Morrison
The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
I’m not entangled in shaping my work according to other people’s views of how I should have done it. Toni Morrison
I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. Toni Morrison
What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it? Toni Morrison
For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event. 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. Toni Morrison
The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book. Toni Morrison
Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy’s. Toni Morrison
It’s been mentioned or suggested that Paradise will not be well studied, because it’s about this unimportant intellectual topic, which is religion. Toni Morrison
I am in the position of judging people by the best they’ve ever done rather than the worst. Toni Morrison
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. Toni Morrison
When I went into the publishing industry, many women talked about the difficulty they had in persuading their families to let them go to college. They educated the boys, and the girls had to struggle. Toni Morrison
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. Toni Morrison
I think there’s data, and then there’s information that comes from data. And then there’s knowledge that comes from information. And then, after knowledge, there is wisdom. I am interested in how to get from data to wisdom. Toni Morrison
Hope you enjoy reading this collection of powerful Toni Morrison quotes and let me know in the comment section which one will become your daily mantra.
