The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.
Toni MorrisonIt was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.
Toni MorrisonYou rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up.
Toni MorrisonWhen you first start writing-and I think it's true for a lot of beginning writers-you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right that minute it's never going to show up again. And it isn't. But it doesn't matter-another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it-and fix it again and again and again, and it will be better.
Toni Morrison