"This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You...
I get angry about things, then go on and work.
~ Toni Morrison ~
I get angry about things, then go on and work.
More Toni Morrison quotes
"There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizat...
"I didn't plan on either children or writing. Once I realized that writing satisfied me in some enormous way, I had to make adjustments. The writing wa...
"When I write, I don't translate for white readers.... Dostoevski wrote for a Russian audience, but we're able to read him. If I'm specific, and I don'...
"Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.
"I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ours...
"I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but th...
"I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.
"The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with whic...
"All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschy...
"Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.
"For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger...
"I want to remind us all that art is dangerous. I want to remind you of the history of artists who have been murdered, slaughtered, imprisoned, chopped...
"I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of D...
"Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I do...