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Toni Morrison

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Toni Morrison

Born: February 18, 1931

Nationality: American

Occupation: Novelist, writer

Biography: Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor. 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. She also was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005.

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Toni Morrison

“You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving — thats what's useful for art.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Interview with Don Swaim (1987)

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Toni Morrison

“For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Interview with Don Swaim (1987)

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Toni Morrison

“What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: As quoted in the New York Times Magazine (11 September 1994)

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Toni Morrison

“I'm just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it is like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now. Novels are always inquiries for me.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Interview in Salon magazine ( 2 February 1998)

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Toni Morrison

“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Paradise (1998) First lines

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Toni Morrison

“In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: First lines - Sula (1973)

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Toni Morrison

“Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Sula (1973)

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Toni Morrison

“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Sula (1973)

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Toni Morrison

“It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Sula (1973)

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Toni Morrison

“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: First lines - Beloved (1987)

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Toni Morrison

“My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Beloved (1987)

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Toni Morrison

“If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Beloved (1987)

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Toni Morrison

“A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Beloved (1987)

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Toni Morrison

“Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?”

- Toni Morrison

Source/Notes: Beloved (1987)

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