Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrisonis an American novelist, editor, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 February 1931
CityLorain, OH
CountryUnited States of America
father men thinking
It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.
ideas impact sorority
I began to realize that this idea of the lighter the better and the darker the worse was really - had an impact on sororities, on friendships, on all sorts of things, and it was stunning to me.
clothes people house
I don't work. I keep telling people I'm unemployed. And I don't wash dishes, and I don't wash clothes, and I don't clean my house. Somebody else does that.
mother school night
I sang "O Holy Night" in a school choir. My mother came and listened to me and complimented me. So that was the high point. I cannot sing a note.
real father thinking
I don't think I knew any of my father's friends - male friends - by their real names. I remember them only by their nicknames.
names devil littles
Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.
names people bears
I couldn't bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.
children father men
My father saw two black men lynched on his street in Cartersville, as a child. And I think seeing two black businessmen - not vagrants - hanging from trees as a child was traumatic for him.
light race color
I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.
world whole-world whole
I thought the whole world was like Lorain.
strong children race
Occasionally, as children, we might figure out how to call somebody a name, and they would figure out how to call us. But it wasn't - it was so light. It was so fluffy. I didn't really have a strong awareness of segregation and the separation of races until I left Lorain, Ohio.
thinking creating way
When I'm not creating or focusing on something I can imagine or invent, I think I go back over my life - I don't recommend this by the way - and you pick up, oh, what'd you do that for? Why didn't you understand this?
artist origin-of-life doe
This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.
night hands years
But Jude,' she would say, 'you knew me. All those days and years, Jude, you knew me. My ways and my hands and how my stomach folded and how we tried to get Mickey to nurse and how about that time when the landlord said...but you said...and I cried, Jude. You knew me and had listened to the things I said in the night, and heard me in the bathroom and laughed at my raggedy girdle and I laughed too because I knew you too, Jude. So how could you leave me when you knew me?