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"Let me tell you something. A man ain't a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can't chop down because they're inside."
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"The houses have been condemned on Memory LaneI'm tired of this struggle that leaves everything the sameI've tried so hard to make it workthat I'm dying insideWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowPromises that remain promises are useless and they're cheapI wish I could put a price on words so I could make them keepI put so much faith in youI lost all my faith in meWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowI'm giving up on giving upI can't leave it all to prayer'Cause the first step in getting betteris knowing what's not thereYou said you'd make it betterand that just makes it worseWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowYes, I want my life to lastSo you can't have my tomorrowNo, you can't have my tomorrow."

"But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone conneced her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child."

"God has called His creation to find satisfaction in a personal relationship with Him, and stop trying to manage the world by conforming it to our expectations, and to allow Him to govern His creation. He continues to say through an ancient Hebrew worship song, 'Be still and know that I am God!"

"Everybody was in struggle, in the grind trying to make it."

"What am I doing? Tearing myself. My usual occupation at most times."

"Discouragement is root of distress."

"I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve."

"I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky."
Explore more quotes by Toni Morrison


"Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I'll tell you where. From that little hog's gut that hangs between your legs. Well, let me tell you something... you will need more than that. I don't know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that.... You are a sad, pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man. I hope your little hog's gut stands you in good stead, and you take good care of it, because you don't have anything else."


"She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."


"You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that."


"In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of idle imagination. 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 from, she became dangerous."


"Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."


"Jump, if you want to, 'cause I'll catch you, girl. I'll catch you "fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I'll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I'm not saying this because I need a place to stay. That's the last thing I need. I told you, I'm a walking man, but I been heading in this direction for seven years. Walking all around this place. Upstate, downstate, east, west; I been in territory ain't got no name, never staying nowhere long. But when I got here and sat out there on the porch, waiting for you, well, I knew it wasn't the place I was heading toward; it was you. We can make a life, girl. A life."


"Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears."


"In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color."
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