Toni morrison Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Author: Toni Morrison
Quotes of Author: Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison _ Beloved
Down came the dry flakes, fat enough and heavy enough to crash like nickels on stone. It always surprised him, how quiet it was. Not like rain, but like a secret.
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Toni Morrison _ The Bluest Eye
And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life.
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Toni Morrison _ Paradise
Over and over and with the least provocation, they pulled from their stock of stories tales about the old folks, their grands and great-grands; their fathers and mothers. Dangerous confrontations, clever manoeuvres. Testimonies to endurance, wit, skill and strength. Tales of luck and outrage. But why were there no stories to tell of themselves? About their own lives they shut up. Had nothing to say, pass on. As though past heroism was enough of a future to live by. As though, rather than children, they wanted duplicates.
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Toni Morrison _ Jazz
You're in trouble,' she says, yawning. 'Deep, deep trouble. Can't rival the dead for love. Lose every time.
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Toni Morrison _ Paradise
A voluntary act to fill empty hours had become intensive labor streaked with the bad feelings that ride the skin like pollen when too much about one's neighbors is known.
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Toni Morrison _ Jazz
Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.
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Toni Morrison _ God Help the Child
Her color is a cross she will always carry.
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Toni Morrison _ Song of Solomon
You have pissed your last in this house . . . and I don't make velvet roses anymore.
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Toni Morrison _ Tar Baby
Imagine something. Something that fits in the dark. Say the dark is the sky at night. Imagine something in it.""A star?""Yes.""I can't. I can't see it.""Okay. Don't try to see it. Try to be it. Would you like to know what it's like to be one? Be a star?""A movie star?""No, a star star. In the sky. Keep your eyes closed, think about what it feels like to be one." He moved over to her and kissed her shoulder. "Imagine yourself in that dark, all alone in the sky at night. Nobody is around you. You are by yourself, just shining there. You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself, it's not a twinkle, it's more like a throb. Star throbs. Over and over and over. Like this. Stars just throb and throb and throb and sometimes, when they can't throb anymore, when they can't hold it anymore, they fall out of the sky.
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Toni Morrison _ Beloved
Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name?
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Toni Morrison _ The Bluest Eye
But suppose my eyes aren't blue enough? Blue enough for what? Blue enough for…I don't know. Blue enough for something. Blue enough…for you!
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Toni Morrison _ A Mercy
Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark - weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more - but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog's profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or when a corn-husk doll sitting on a shelf is soon splaying in the corner of a room and the wicked of how it got there is plain. Stranger things happen all the time everywhere. You know. I know you know. One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read?
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