Top 51 Quotes by Toni Morrison

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

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.

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

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.

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

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

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.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

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?