"If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down."

~ Toni Morrison #Botd 1931

Toni Morrison (1931 - 2019) was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved; she gained worldwide recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

In the late 1960s, she became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in New York City. Her works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States.

"I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art." ~ Toni Morrison

"There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal."
~ Toni Morrison

"I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs ... just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game."
~ Toni Morrison

"The function of freedom is to free someone else."
~ Toni Morrison

"There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism."
~ Toni Morrison

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
~ Toni Morrison

"All important things are hard."
~ Toni Morrison

"I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are."
~ Toni Morrison

"It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which 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 so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. ...

... Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing."
~ Toni Morrison

"Make a difference about something other than yourselves."
~ Toni Morrison

"From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny."
~ Toni Morrison

"Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con."
~ Toni Morrison

"Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind."
~ Toni Morrison

"If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem."
~ Toni Morrison

@Atelier462

"Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love."
~ Toni Morrison

"Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge."
~ Toni Morrison

"Please don't settle for happiness...Of course you deserve it, but if that's all you have in mind-happiness-I want to suggest to you that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice-that's more than a barren life. It's a trivial one."

"In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent."
~ Toni Morrison

"A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order."
~ Toni Morrison

"You are your best thing."
~ Toni Morrison

"... art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances."
~ Toni Morrison

“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.”
~ Toni Morrison

"Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s; it's choosing the ones you want."
~ Toni Morrison

A quote from Toni Morrison at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.