Toni Morrison

For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

I get angry about things, then go on and work.

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

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

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

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.

What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us.

The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.

I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.

When you first start writing-and I think it's true for a lot of beginning writers-you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it-and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better.

Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.

Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death - each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

Being able to laugh got me through.

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. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.

For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

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

My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.