I know there's some poetry that sort of sounds like daisies, but most of the good poetry is also [political], you can feel the heartbeat; it's about some situation that concerns human beings under duress. It's suggesting a solution, or just acknowledging that [the situation] exists. Art does that.
Toni MorrisonIf writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
Toni MorrisonI tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.
Toni MorrisonWe die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
Toni Morrison