Toni Morrison

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

1987

My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

1987

Of course I'm a black writer.... I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Interview in Newsweek (30 March 1981), 1981

Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Morrison said this in her talk at the annual meeting of the Ohio Arts Council in Cincinnati in September 1981. Variants, unsourced:, 1981

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. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.

Tar Baby (1981), 1981

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

Interview in Newsweek (30 March 1981), 1981

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.

Commencement address at Barnard College (May 1979) as quoted in Ms. magazine (September 1979), 1979

Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

Guitar to Milkman on why a male peacock can't fly much better than a chicken., 1977

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

1977

In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.

First lines, 1973

It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

1973

Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

1973

I know what every colored woman in this country is doing. . . . Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.

1973

There is really nothing more to say — except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

The Bluest Eye (1969), 1969

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty.

The Bluest Eye (1969) First lines, 1969