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"If she answered, he could not hear it, and he certainly couldn't see her, so he went. First he crawled the rocks one by one, one by one, till his hands touched shore and the nursing sound of the sea was behind him. He felt around, crawled off and then stood up. Breathing heavily with his mouth open he took a few tentative steps. The pebbles made him stumble and so did the roots of trees. He threw out his hands to guide and steady his going. By and by he walked steadier, now steadier. The mist lifted and the trees stepped back a bit as if to make the way easier for a certain kind of man. Then he ran. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Looking neither to the left nor to the right. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Lickety-lickety-lickety-split."
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"He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."

"You stand the risk of bankruptcy, because you refused to take risks. So life demands risks."

"At least I'm not afraid, and no one will ever call me boring."

"Throw a warrior to the wolves and he'll return a conqueror."

"Fear makes people speechless."

"When the sails are strong a ship has no reason to fear turbulence."

"All great achievements of humanity begin with the madness of a few lion-hearts."

"Walking on water is safer than sailing in a leaking boat."
Explore more quotes by Toni Morrison


"Guileless and without vanity,we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our own skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness."


"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."


"In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it."


"God take what He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn't mean a thing."


"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 twenty 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."


"No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along."


"Sethe, he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow."He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe, You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?"


"Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty....A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles."
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