Toni Morrison
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
– 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
“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
– Toni Morrison
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
– Toni Morrison
“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
– Toni Morrison
“Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you?”
– Toni Morrison
“You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own.”
– Toni Morrison
“Make up a story…For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light.”
– Toni Morrison
“Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.”
– Toni Morrison
“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.”
– Toni Morrison
“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”
– Toni Morrison
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
– Toni Morrison
“Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him.”
– Toni Morrison
“Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind.”
– 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
“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe.”
– 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
“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another – physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.”
– Toni Morrison
“Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.”
– Toni Morrison
“You are your best thing.”
– Toni Morrison