I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.
Toni Morrison...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.
Toni MorrisonIf a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.
Toni MorrisonBut her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.
Toni MorrisonListening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon-everything belonged to the men who had the guns. . . . So you protected yourself and loved small. . . . A woman, a child, a brother-a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. . . . To get to a place where you could love anything you chose-not to need permission for desire-well now, that was freedom
Toni Morrison