Toni Morrison

I'm not interested in writing about happy people. I'm interested in writing about real people.

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

I'm not a feminist. I'm a Black woman.

If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.

Racism is a distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being.

Nonsense. The only thing they can do to you is kill you. And then your spirit is free. So don't be afraid. Fear of death is the greatest evil.

I think of myself as an American writer. I don't think of myself as a Black writer.

The very serious function of racism 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 you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

Black people have always been there. We're just not being seen. And when we are seen, we're seen as a problem.

I want to feel what I feel. Even if it's not happiness.

The world is not a safe place for women.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

Certain things you can't get back. Not all of them, but certain things.

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.

Slavery is never a choice. It's a condition.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.

You can't have a good marriage unless you're a good person.

Being a Black woman writer is not a concession to anything. It's a privilege.

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.

I don't need a white person to tell me about my culture.