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More Quotes by Toni Morrison
Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.
It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.
Make a difference about something other than yourselves.
A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.
Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.
Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.
Laughter is more serious than tears.
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 not just a grab-bag candy game.
From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.
