Toni Morrison

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. As quoted in Grace Notes (1989) by Rita Dove”

“The fully realized presence of the haunting is both a major incumbent of the narrative and sleight of hand. One of its purposes is to keep the reader preoccupied with the nature of the incredible spirit world while being supplied a controlled diet of the incredible political world. … Here I wanted the compelling confusion of being there as they (the characters) are; suddenly, without comfort or succor from the”

“Black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men. Black Women Writers at Work (1983) by Claudia Tate”

“If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”

“Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. Morrison said this in her talk at the annual meeting of the Ohio Arts Council in Cincinnati in September 1981. Variants, unsourced: If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

“Was there anything so loathsome as a wilfully innocent man? Hardly. 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. Tar Baby”

“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”

“Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us. Commencement address at Barnard College (May 1979) as quoted in Ms. magazine”

“There is really nothing more to say”

“Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. The Bluest Eye (1969) First lines”