The first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison, who passed away on August 5, 2019, left behind a legacy of wisdom in her novels and essays. Her work explores topics like human nature, happiness, love, and enduring hardships, but also delves into the subject of freedom and what that has meant for African Americans.
Morrison’s words are direct, but compassionate. She confronts the difficult realities of life with empathy and care, never holding back the truth. In this way, she was able to forge a deep connection with listeners and reshape their thoughts.
Whether you’re seeking the strength to overcome something difficult or just want a gentle nudge to believe in yourself, these Toni Morrison quotes are sure to speak to you.
Quotes on Freedom
Much of Morrison’s work explores freedom and what that concept truly means. As just one example, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved is inspired by the true story of a woman’s escape from slavery and the consequences freedom brings. Her writings on the subject of liberation are deeply stirring and can make one appreciate just how valuable independence is.
1. “When I woke up I reminded myself that freedom is never free. You have to fight for it. Work for it and make sure you are able to handle it.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
2. “Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you... Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.” – Toni Morrison, Home
3. “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
4. “To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.” – Toni Morrison, A Mercy
5. “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
6. “I am suggesting that we pay as much attention to our nurturing sensibilities as to our ambition. You are moving in the direction of freedom, and the function of freedom is to free somebody else. You are moving toward self-fulfillment, and the consequences of that fulfillment should be to discover that there is something just as important as you are.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
Quotes on Life
Whether confronting difficult-to-swallow realities or offering easygoing musings on happiness, Morrison’s collection of life’s truths are peppered throughout her entire library of work.
7. “Inviting compassion into the bloodstream of an institution’s agenda or a scholar’s purpose is more than productive, more than civilizing, more than ethical, more than humane; it’s humanizing.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
8. “But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
9. “Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.” – Toni Morrison, Sula
10. “Correct what you can; learn from what you can’t.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
11. “Today is always here... Tomorrow, never.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
12. “You couldn’t learn age, but adulthood was there for all.” – Toni Morrison, Home
13. “We never shape the world... the world shapes us.” – Toni Morrison, A Mercy
14. “How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.” – Toni Morrison, Paradise
15. “We must do all we can to imagine the Other before we presume to solve the problems work and life demand of us.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
16. “Everything depends on knowing how much... Good is knowing when to stop.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
17. “You have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and defensive at the same time. When to love something and when to quit. If you don't know how, you can end up out of control or controlled by some outside thing.” – Toni Morrison, Jazz
18. “She did not tell them to clean up their lives, or go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek, or its glory-bound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have is the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they could not have it.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
19. “He relished never knowing what lay in his path, who might approach with what intention.” – Toni Morrison, A Mercy
20. "No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
21. “Death is a sure thing but life is just as certain. Problem is you can't know in advance.” – Toni Morrison, Home
22. “What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?” – Toni Morrison, Jazz
23. “When good people take you in and treat you good, you ought to try to be good back.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
24. “Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this county right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see!” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
Quotes on Hardships
Though they’re not all uplifting, Morrison’s quotes on adversity just might offer the perspective you need to reflect on not only your own difficulties, but also those your neighbors or friends could be facing.
25. “The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.” – Toni Morrison, Sula
26. “Listen, baby, people do funny things. Specially us. The cards are stacked against us and just trying to stay in the game, stay alive and in the game, makes us do funny things. Things we can't help. Things that make us hurt one another. We don't even know why. But look here, don't carry it inside and don't give it to nobody else. Try to understand it, but if you can't, just forget it and keep yourself strong.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
27. “Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake—otherwise it just walks on in your door.” – Toni Morrison, Home
28. “Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's.” – Toni Morrison, Love
29. “The human body is robust. It can gather strength when it's in mortal danger.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
30. “Why not? I can be miserable if I want to. You don't need to try and make it go away. It shouldn't go away. It's just as sad as it ought to be and I'm not going to hide from what's true just because it hurts.” – Toni Morrison, Home
31. “The visionary language of the doomed reaches heights of linguistic ardor with which language of the blessed and saved cannot compete.” – Toni Morrison, Paradise
32. “She was fierce in the presence of death, heroic even, as she was at no other time. Its threat gave her direction, clarity, audacity.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
33. “When fear rules, obedience is the only survival choice.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
34. “Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.” – Toni Morrison, Love
35. “So this is what insanity is. Not goofy behavior, but watching a sudden change in the world you used to know.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
Quotes on Love
Despite the hardships many of Morrison’s characters endure, her work always finds room for love, offering timeless truths on marriage, relationships, and romance.
36. “Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
37. “You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
38. “It was lovely. Not to be stared at, not seen, but being pulled into view by the interested, uncritical eyes of the other.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
39. “I’ll tell you a real one. You got anything left to you to love, anything at all, do it.” – Toni Morrison, Jazz
40. “It's not about choosing somebody over her. It's about making space for somebody along with her.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
41. “Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn—by practice and careful contemplations—the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it.” – Toni Morrison, Paradise
43. “More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?” – Toni Morrison, A Mercy
44. “Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses—young loving.” – Toni Morrison, Jazz
45. “Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.... People with no imagination feed it with sex—the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that—softly, without props.” – Toni Morrison, Love
46. “Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.” – Toni Morrison, Paradise
47. “Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
48. “Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.” – Toni Morrison, Jazz
Quotes on Nature and the World
Morrison’s rich, metaphorical language makes truly seeing the world around you easy. Her quotes on nature will remind you to appreciate its beauty and intricacies.
49. “The sun and the moon shared the horizon in a distant friendship, each unfazed by the other.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
50. “I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer—its dust and lowering skies.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
51. “So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
52. “A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.” – Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
53. “Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
Quotes on Self
If you’re in need of empowering words, look no further than these quotes from Morrison on the self. From notes on believing in yourself to reminders that the mind and heart knows best, these quotes will restore your confidence.
54. “No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
55. “Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.” – Toni Morrison, Home
56. “'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.'” – Toni Morrison, Sula
57. “Definitions belong to the definers—not the defined.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
58. “Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.” – Toni Morrison, Sula
59. “What a man leaves behind is what a man is.” – Toni Morrison, A Mercy
Quotes on Family and Relationships
Much of Morrison’s work is centered around the bonds of family and relationships. From cherishing the individuals who make up a family to gentle musings on the importance of raising children or nourishing a friendship, her advice can help remedy any situation.
60. “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
61. “Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality—collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
62. “A daughter is a woman that cares about where she come from and takes care of them that took care of her.” – Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
63. “It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.” – Toni Morrison, Sula
64. “The best thing she was, was her children.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
65. “Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved
66. “Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
67. “What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
68. “What one puts up with in a friendship is determined by the emotional value of the relationship.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
Quotes on Art and Her Craft
With her affinity for words and her appreciation of beauty, Morrison had a knack for voicing why art, music, and storytelling are vital. Explore these quotes to boost your own creativity.
69. “Art is not mere entertainment or decoration, it has meaning, and we both want and need to fathom that meaning—not fear, dismiss, or construct superficial responses told to us by authorities.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
70. “I need to use everything—sound, image, performance—to get at the full meaning of the story.” – Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
71. “Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.” – Toni Morrison, Sula
72. “Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
73. “A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
74. “At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens—that letting go—you let go because you can.” – Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
75. “I don’t think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
76. “Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.” – Toni Morrison, Love
77. “Her passions were narrow but deep.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
78. “The novel, I believe, allows, encourages ways to experience the public—in time, with affect, in a communal space, with other people (characters), and in language that insists on individual participation. It also tries to illuminate and recover the relationship between literature and public life.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
79. “All narrative begins for me as listening. When I read, I listen. When I write, I listen—for silence, inflection, rhythm, rest.” – Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
80. “Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
81. “Language, when it finally comes, has the vigor of a felon pardoned after twenty-one years on hold. Sudden, raw, stripped to its underwear.” – Toni Morrison, Love
Quotes on Race and Progress
As an essayist and professor, Morrison advocated for progress and improvement for Black communities and pivotal change for American society as a whole. When you need encouragement to fight for what you believe in, look no further than her wisdom on this subject.
82. “Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
83. “Her color is a cross she will always carry.” – Toni Morrison, God Help the Child
84. "The media spectacle must not continue to direct its attention to the manufacture of consent, rather than debate with more than two sides, to the reinforcement of untruths, and a review of what else there is to buy.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
85. “I suspect that a nonracist, nonsexist, educating press is as profitable as one that is not. I suspect that clarification of difficult issues is just as entertaining as obscuring and reducing them is. But it will take more than an effort of the will to make such a press profitable; it will take imagination, invention, and a strong sense of responsibility and accountability.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
86. “We cannot be optimistic, but we can be clear. We can identify the enemy. We can begin by asking ourselves what it is right rather than what is expedient. Know the difference between fever and the disease. Between racism and greed. We can be clear and we can be careful. Careful to avoid the imprisonment of the mind, the spirit, and the will of ourselves and those among whom we live. We can be careful of tolerating second-rate goals and secondhand ideas.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
87. “Our past is bleak. Our future dim. But I am not reasonable. A reasonable man adjusts to his environment. An unreasonable man does not. All progress, therefore, depends on the unreasonable man. I prefer not to adjust to my environment. I refuse the prison of ‘I’ and choose the open spaces of ‘we.’” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
88. “Don’t let anybody, anybody convince you this is the way the world is and therefore must be. It must be the way it ought to be.” – Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
