Top 500 Toni Morrison Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Birth, life, and death – each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.”

— Toni Morrison

102. “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.”

— Toni Morrison

103. “She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”

— Toni Morrison

104. “If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”

— Toni Morrison

105. “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.”

— Toni Morrison

106. “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.”

— Toni Morrison

107. “There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.”

— Toni Morrison

108. “Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn’t have each other you had nothing.”

— Toni Morrison

109. “Liberation means you don’t have to be silenced.”

— Toni Morrison

110. “Let your face speak what’s in your heart. When my kids walk in the room my face says I’m glad to see them.”

— Toni Morrison

111. “Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.”

— Toni Morrison

112. “You are worthy to be seen. You are worthy to be heard. You are worthy to be sat with, to be walked beside. Even in your quietest moments, you are worthy of witness.”

— Toni Morrison

113. “Love is divine only and difficult always.”

— Toni Morrison

114. “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

— Toni Morrison

115. “Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature.”

— Toni Morrison

116. “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.”

— Toni Morrison

117. “Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.”

— Toni Morrison

118. “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.”

— Toni Morrison

119. “I’m always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else’s contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we’re demons.”

— Toni Morrison

120. “When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.”

— Toni Morrison

121. “A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.”

— Toni Morrison

122. “The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time.”

— Toni Morrison

123. “Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.”

— Toni Morrison

124. “A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.”

— Toni Morrison

125. “What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?”

— Toni Morrison

126. “Home is memory, home is your history, home is where you work. Some people want to abandon it and become truly local. But the questions are all there.”

— Toni Morrison

127. “Lay my head on the railroad line. Train come along; pacify my mind.”

— Toni Morrison

128. “Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”

— Toni Morrison

129. “A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.”

— Toni Morrison

130. “Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.”

— Toni Morrison

131. “Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.”

— Toni Morrison

132. “Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.”

— Toni Morrison

133. “Who’s Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?”

— Toni Morrison

134. “124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For.”

— Toni Morrison

135. “The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.”

— Toni Morrison

136. “There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.”

— Toni Morrison

137. “I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ’em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more.”

— Toni Morrison

138. “When I woke up I reminded myself that freedom is never free. You have to fight for it. Work for it and make sure you are able to handle it. Now.”

— Toni Morrison

139. “Correct what you can; learn from what you can’t.”

— Toni Morrison

140. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

— Toni Morrison

141. “Writing is really a way of thinking – not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.”

— Toni Morrison

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

— Toni Morrison

143. “What a man leaves behind is what a man is.”

— Toni Morrison

144. “Sula never competed; she simply helped others define themselves.”

— Toni Morrison

145. “Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth.”

— Toni Morrison

146. “When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?”

— Toni Morrison

147. “I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color – light, black, in-between – as the marker for race is really an error.”

— Toni Morrison

148. “Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.”

— Toni Morrison

149. “You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.”

— Toni Morrison

150. “No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.”

— Toni Morrison