Toni Morrison Quotes

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.

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.

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.

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.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

She is a friend of 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.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

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.

Let your face speak what’s in your heart.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.

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

The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.