Toni Morrison Quotes, Thoughts and images

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

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

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

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

All important things are hard.

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

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

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

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

I dream a dream that dreams back at me.

You are your best thing

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

Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

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

Let your face speak what's in your heart.

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

Love is never any better than the lover.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

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

Laughter is more serious than tears.

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

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

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

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

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

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