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" I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes. "

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" For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event. "

Toni Morrison

Media

Conflict

Time

" I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. "

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

" If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression. "

" I get angry about things, then go on and work. "

" Everywhere, everywhere, children are the scorned people of the earth. "

" 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. "

" If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it. "

" You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone. "

" Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network. "

" I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway. "

" All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. "

" The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book. "

" Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers. "

" 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. "

Toni Morrison

Personal

Equality

" In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color. "

" I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. "

" One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to. "

" Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It's truly unbelievable. "

" My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children. "

" Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it. "

" You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say? "

" I like marriage. The idea. "

Toni Morrison

Idea

Funny

" I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about. "

" A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people. "

" We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives. "

" I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people. "

" Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader. "

" There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how. "

Toni Morrison

Nothing

Why

" I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it. "