One of the monstrous things that slavery in this country caused was the breakup of families. I mean, physical labor, horrible; beatings, horrible; lynching death, all of that, horrible. But the living life of a parent who, A, has no control over what happens to your children, none. They don't belong to you. You may not even nurse them. They may be shipped off somewhere, as in "Beloved" the mother was, to be nursed by somebody who was not able to work in the fields and was a wet nurse.
Toni MorrisonMisery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.
Toni MorrisonThe presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.
Toni MorrisonClever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
Toni Morrison...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was like and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside of herself.
Toni Morrison