Zitate von Toni Morrison

„Vielleicht ist es das, worauf alle menschlichen Beziehungen hinauslaufen: Würdest du mein Leben retten? oder würdest du es nehmen?“

—  Toni Morrison

„Wenn ein Neger Beine hat, sollte er sie benutzen. Setzen Sie sich zu lange, jemand wird einen Weg finden, sie zu fesseln.“

—  Toni Morrison

„Wenn Glück Vorfreude gepaart mit Gewissheit ist, dann waren wir glücklich.“

—  Toni Morrison

„Ein Traum ist nur ein Alptraum mit Lippenstift.“

—  Toni Morrison

„I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, 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

„Anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best things she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing — the part of her that was clean.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Beloved

Quelle: Beloved (1987), Ch. 26

„Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Song of Solomon

Quelle: Song of Solomon

„But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Jazz

Quelle: Jazz

„If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.“

—  Toni Morrison

„Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Jazz

Quelle: Jazz

„Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Beloved

Quelle: Beloved (1987)
Kontext: Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. <!-- ~ Ch. 9

„Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Beloved

Quelle: Beloved

„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, buch Tar Baby

Tar Baby (1981)

„She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Beloved

Quelle: Beloved

„Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Beloved

Quelle: Beloved

„And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.“

—  Toni Morrison

„Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Beloved

Quelle: Beloved

„Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.“

—  Toni Morrison, buch Sula

Quelle: Sula (1973)

„We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public.“

—  Toni Morrison

Burn This Book, p. 2 (2009)
Kontext: We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow.