It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of autonomy in love, suggesting that one cannot possess another person.
Toni Morrison's quote challenges the notion of ownership in relationships, particularly in love. It suggests that the word 'belong' implies possession, which is inherently problematic because it diminishes individual freedom and humanity. In love, rather than viewing a partner as someone to own, it is essential to recognize and respect their autonomy and individuality.
In practice
This quote can be shared during discussions about healthy relationships.
There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.
You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.
What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.
All love's pleasure shall not match its woe.
Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.
But if I lost you, it would devastate me as nothing else has or ever could. You have so much power over me and thatβs frightening.
Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love.
A five-word sentence that could change the world tomorrow is What would love do now?
There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves.
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