Toni Morrison Quotes

For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.

Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.

Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race – scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct… it has a social function, racism.

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.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.

Nelson Mandela is, for me, the single statesman in the world. The single statesman, in that literal sense, who is not solving all his problems with guns. It’s truly unbelievable.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.

I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.