Zitate von Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Geburtstag: 18. Februar 1931
Todesdatum: 5. August 2019
Toni Morrison ist eine amerikanische Schriftstellerin. Sie zählt zu den bedeutendsten Vertretern der afroamerikanischen Literatur und erhielt 1993 den Literaturnobelpreis.
Werk
Zitate Toni Morrison
„Der Afrikanismus ist das Vehikel, durch das sich das amerikanische Ich als nicht versklavt, sondern frei erfährt, als nicht abstoßend, sondern begehrenswert, nicht hilflos, sondern priviligiert und mächtig, nicht geschichtslos sondern geschichtlich, nicht verdammt, sondern unschuldig, nicht ein blinder Zufall der Evolution, sondern fortschrittliche Erfüllung eines Schicksal.“
— Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
„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
„Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.“
— Toni Morrison, buch Beloved
Quelle: Beloved (1987), Ch. 9
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.
„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)
„Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.“
— Toni Morrison, buch Sula
Quelle: Sula (1973)
„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.“
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Kontext: 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. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?
