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"Write at the edges of the day."
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"Writing. Is it a way to be remembered,or a need to become immortal?"

"The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory."

"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine."

"Between the lines of every book the writer reveals their own secrets."

"My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward."

"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."

"A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins."

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."

"A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual."
Explore more quotes by Toni Morrison


"Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet."


"They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp."


"You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?"


"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it."


"You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose."
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