Quotes from Toni Morrison

You have pissed your last in this house . . . and I don't make velvet roses anymore.

Her color is a cross she will always carry.

Whitefolks said he was a witch doctor, but they said that so they wouldn't have to say he was smart. A hunter's hunter that's what he was. Smart as they come. Taught me two lessons I lived by all my life. One was the secret of kindness from white people —they had to pity a thing before they could like it. The other--- oh well, I forgot it." Joe Trace

It wasn't a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human.

Things got better but I still had to be careful. Very careful in how I raised her. I had to be strict, very strict. Lula Ann needed to learn how to behave, how to keep her head down and not to make trouble. I don't care how many times she changes her name. Her color is a cross she will always carry. But it's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not my fault. It's not. Bride I'm scared.

A voluntary act to fill empty hours had become intensive labor streaked with the bad feelings that ride the skin like pollen when too much about one's neighbors is known.

She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn't anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I say myself as somebody I'd seen in a picture show or a magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am it seemed wrong.

A good man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to. Don't matter. You find one, stay there. You see a scary one, make tracks.

And for a reason he still did not understand, he began to cry. Love plain, simple, and so fast it shattered him.

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

The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books. An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status — that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me.

She is not so afraid at night because she is the color of it.