How come it canโt fly no better than a chicken?โ Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Canโt nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.โ The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.
Toni MorrisonAnger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling โ I don't think it's any of that โ it's helpless ... it's absence of control โ and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that โ I have no use for it whatsoever." [Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]
Toni MorrisonI'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.
Toni MorrisonAll the books that were being published by African-American guys were saying 'screw whitey', or some variation of that. Not the scholars but the pop books. And the other thing they said was, 'You have to confront the oppressor.' I understand that. But you don't have to look at the world through his eyes. I'm not a stereotype; I'm not somebody else's version of who I am. And so when people said at that time black is beautiful โ yeah? Of course. Who said it wasn't? So I was trying to say, in The Bluest Eye, wait a minute. Guys. There was a time when black wasn't beautiful. And you hurt.
Toni Morrison