I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.
Toni MorrisonTags: writing race toni-morrison
Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn't allowed to be and stay what I was [...] School teacher changed me. I was something else and that something else was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub. (Paul D.)
Toni MorrisonTags: beloved toni-morrison
Well, it probably won't live. They say the way her mama beat her she lucky to be alive herself.
She be lucky if it don't live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking.
Can't help but be. Ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground.
Well, I wouldn't worry none. It be a miracle if it live.
Tags: toni-morrison the-bluest-eye teen-pregnancy
When I first seed Cholly, I want you to know it was like all the bits of color from that time down home when all us chil'ren went berry picking after a funeral and I put some in the pocket of my Sunday dress, and they mashed up and stained my hips. My whole dress was messed with purple, and it never did wash out. Not the dress nor me. I could feel that purple deep inside me. And that lemonade Mama used to make when Pap came in out the fields. It be cool and yellowish, with seeds floating near the bottom. And that streak of green them june bugs made on the trees the night we left from down home. All of them colors was in me. Just sitting there. So when Cholly come up and tickled my foot, it was like them berries, that lemonade, them streaks of green the june bugs made, all come together. Cholly was thin then, with real light eyes. He used to whistle, and when I heerd him, shivers come on my skin.
Toni MorrisonTags: toni-morrison cholly-and-pauline the-bluest-eye
Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.
Toni MorrisonTags: beauty toni-morrison the-bluest-eye
I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?'
" 'The way I want it?'
" 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?'
" 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.'
" 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.'
" 'Mess it up how?'
" 'Forgot it.'
" 'Forgot?'
" 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.
Tags: identity 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
Sean LiburdTags: reading toni-morrison african-american writing-life
Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass.
Neither one had spoken a word.
Tags: magic-realism toni-morrison sula realismo-mágico
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. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."
Sixo
Tags: beloved toni-morrison sixo
Her heart kicked and an itchy burning in her throat made her swallow all her saliva away. She didn't know which way to go.
Toni MorrisonTags: beloved toni-morrison
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