Toni Morrison, the literary GIANT, who manipulated the English language to illustrate and punctuate our humanity as Black people, children of the Sun, has joined our ancestors.
She was a force to reckon with on this side, she will be indomitable in the other. Thank you for Sula, for Milkman, for Pecola, for Baby Suggs, for Beloved. May we never let your work be in vain. Walk in light.
Here are just a few of our favorite Toni Morrison quotes:
Toni Morrison Quotes
“If there is a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”
“Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly.”
“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.’”
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
“Perhaps that’s what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?”
“if you can only be tall because somebody’s on their knees, you have a serious problem.”
-Tony O. Lawson (IG @thebusyafrican)
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