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| Toni Morrison |
'Love is never any better than the lover': Toni Morrison – a life in quotes
The author and Nobel laureate has died at the age of 88, leaving behind a career filled with insight
Guardian Staff
Tuesday 6 August 2019
A
uthor and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, whose books included Beloved and The Bluest Eye, has died at the age of 88. Her extensive career provided rich insight both within her work and outside of it. Here are some of her most memorable quotes.
On writing
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.
If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
I’m writing for black people, in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me, a 14-year-old coloured girl from Lorain, Ohio. I don’t have to apologise or consider myself limited because I don’t [write about white people] – which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books. The point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it.
I feel totally curious and alive and in control. And almost … magnificent, when I write.
I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can’t do anything anyway.
Writing is really a way of thinking, not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
On love
Love is never any better than the lover.
Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.
Something that is loved is never lost.
To get to a place where you could love anything you chose, not to need permission for desire, well now that was freedom.
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?
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.
Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
On racism
The function, 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 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. 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.
I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.
On writing
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.
If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
I’m writing for black people, in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me, a 14-year-old coloured girl from Lorain, Ohio. I don’t have to apologise or consider myself limited because I don’t [write about white people] – which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books. The point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it.
I feel totally curious and alive and in control. And almost … magnificent, when I write.
I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can’t do anything anyway.
Writing is really a way of thinking, not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
On love
Love is never any better than the lover.
Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.
Something that is loved is never lost.
To get to a place where you could love anything you chose, not to need permission for desire, well now that was freedom.
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?
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.
Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.
The function, 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 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. 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.
I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.
There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race – scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct.
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.
On society
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them.
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.
American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen.
There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.
On gender
I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.
The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.
Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.
On mortality
Death is a sure thing but life is just as certain. Problem is you can’t know in advance.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
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