Toni Morrison is a name well respected and admired in modern English literature. She had a long career as an academic and an editor before she started writing herself, but her work brought her critical, cultural and social significance.
In her long career as a novelist and literary activist she inspired many people to share their stories. She won the Pulitzer Prize and then the Nobel Prize for literature. Her novels, short stories, essays and innovations have done well to showcase the African-American life, trauma and dilemma. Her steadfastness and dedication to creating a new space in popular and academic literature has inspired and touched millions around the world.
Today we are going share some of her quotes, so you can have a taste of her writing and wisdom.
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
“When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.’
‘I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.”
– From her novel Sula
“The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.”
– From her novel Sula
“No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.”
– from God Help the Child
“I want to feel what I feel. What’s mine. Even if it’s not happiness, whatever that means. Because you’re all you’ve got.”
“A son ain’t what a woman say. A son is what a man do.” – from Jazz
“Make up a story… For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.”
There are many interviews and documentaries of Toni Morrison available to the public on Youtube. I strongly recommend that you listen to what she had to say, with her calm relaxed tone and commitment to truth and change in the culture of literature and the standards that run through it.
I also recommend reading her novels like Beloved and The Bluest Eye.
Maheen Ahmed – Writing to create culture
@lahore_la_notte
