Quotes about Toni Morrison

I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.

Love is divine only and difficult always.

Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.

124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom

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

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.

He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be.

There is a difference between being put out and being put outdoors. If you are put out, you go somewhere else; if you are outdoors, there is no place to go. The distinction was subtle but final. Outdoors was the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact, defining and complementing our metaphysical condition.

No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free. DENVER'S SECRETS were sweet.

Rainwater held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe.

The day breeze blew her dress dry; the night wind wrinkled it.

for in their secret awareness of Him, He was not the God of three faces they sang about. They knew quite well that He had four, and that the fourth explained Sula.