Toni Morrison Quotes

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?

What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?

Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

Laughter is more serious than tears.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

Love is never any better than the lover.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

Let your face speak what's in your heart.

At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough.

Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

You are your best thing

I dream a dream that dreams back at me.

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.

All important things are hard.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.