The forbidden word can be provocative. But after a while it becomes monotonous rather than arousing.
Catalog
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931) is an American novelist, editor, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), and Beloved (1987). Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved. Beloved was adapted into a film of the same name (starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover) in 1998. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. She was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Morrison was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005. On May 29, 2012, Morrison received the Presidential Medal of Freedo
Sex is difficult to write about because it’s just not sexy enough.
My feelings are the result of prejudices and convictions like everybody else’s.
The difficulty for me in writing—among the difficulties—is to write language that can work quietly on a page for a reader who doesn’t hear anything. Now for that, one has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm, and so on. So, it…
I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my…
But although history should not become a straitjacket, which overwhelms and binds, neither should it be forgotten.
Writing before dawn began as a necessity—I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, Mama—and that was always around five in the morning.
I only know that I will never again trust my life, my future, to the whims of men, in companies or out. Never again will their judgment have anything to do with what I think I can do. That was the wonderful liberation of being divorced and having children. I did not mind failure, ever, but I minded…
I could read when I was three years old and that’s what I did. At some point, I realized that there was a book I wanted to read, that nobody had written. I really wanted to read it, and the only way I could was to write it.
I was saying last night that nobody loves like children, they don’t know if you’re black, white, or poor.
What people outside this country, particularly in Europe, think about this country, what they like about it is generally something that comes out of black culture. It’s jazz. It’s even language. Think about what this country would be like without us. I wouldn’t even visit!
When somebody like Frederick Douglass wrote a book, he was writing to white people—legitimately—because he wanted them to behave, set him free. That was the audience. Not for me. Tolstoy was not writing for little girls from Ohio. He was writing for Russians, right? I’m writing to, about, and for…
All Ethiopians are beautiful! There are no ugly Ethiopians.
Think about it: If you come to this country from Germany, or Russia, or anywhere, you get off the boat, get on the land. But in order to become an American, you have to be white.