Please don't settle for happiness. It's not good enough. Of course you deserve it, but if that's all you have in mind - happiness - I want to suggest to you that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice - that's more than a barren life. It's a trivial one.
Toni MorrisonThe difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.
Toni MorrisonI write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.
Toni MorrisonI don't think I knew any of my father's friends - male friends - by their real names. I remember them only by their nicknames.
Toni MorrisonThis word "LOVE" - discredited, "clicheed" - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human.
Toni Morrison