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99d232c
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You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
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freedom
empowerment
unburdening
flying
weight
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Toni Morrison |
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7ef7540
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Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
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self
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Toni Morrison |
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f273798
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Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.
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Toni Morrison |
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100b2ef
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Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.
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writing
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Toni Morrison |
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8e8340e
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She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.
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love
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Toni Morrison |
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537ced5
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Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.
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misunderstandings
insanity
sisters
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Toni Morrison |
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f0e3978
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Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
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Toni Morrison |
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3272eba
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Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.
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Toni Morrison |
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ecfe61c
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Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.
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Toni Morrison |
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e6528f0
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You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why..
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women
self-worth
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Toni Morrison |
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0ec9397
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You are your best thing
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Toni Morrison |
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ee0bffd
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Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for you..
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love
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Toni Morrison |
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792fd21
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Love is never any better than the lover.
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Toni Morrison |
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114c46c
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There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.
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Toni Morrison |
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600c9a4
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The function of freedom is to free someone else.
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responsibility
inspirational
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Toni Morrison |
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942e6f7
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Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.
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Toni Morrison |
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55ab9a3
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Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye.
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Toni Morrison |
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17b414d
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If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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inspirational
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Toni Morrison |
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cf7bbd8
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Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
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past
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Toni Morrison |
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069464d
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All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made u..
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Toni Morrison |
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1bbf512
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It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.
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miss
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Toni Morrison |
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bac1f5a
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It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
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sula
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Toni Morrison |
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8d4df41
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He wants to put his story next to hers.
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Toni Morrison |
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4217a3d
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In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up a..
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heart
life
love
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Toni Morrison |
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60061c4
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Lonely was much better than alone.
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solitude
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Toni Morrison |
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d5019be
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All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
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inspiration
exclusion
paradises
utopias
wishes
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Toni Morrison |
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2329f37
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Something that is loved is never lost.
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Toni Morrison |
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251cf20
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He licked his lips. 'Well, if you want my opinion-' 'I don't, ' She said. 'I have my own.
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self-belief
thoughtful
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Toni Morrison |
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63a7b2a
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Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.
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Toni Morrison |
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9c4ff62
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Gimme hate, Lord," he whimpered. "I'll take hate any day. But don't give me love. I can't take no more love, Lord. I can't carry it...It's too heavy. Jesus, you know, you know all about it. Ain't it heavy? Jesus? Ain't love heavy?"
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Toni Morrison |
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7ad887a
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Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not just in my remory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think if, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happ..
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Toni Morrison |
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f9f5eab
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Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.
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Toni Morrison |
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44a80c7
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Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.
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toni-morrison
the-bluest-eye
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Toni Morrison |
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c088c70
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if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away
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Toni Morrison |
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4d3dd68
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In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an 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 an artist with no art..
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Toni Morrison |
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30b0ea3
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Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds..
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prize
speech
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Toni Morrison |
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e08357a
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She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.
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Toni Morrison |
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c092917
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I dream a dream that dreams back at me
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Toni Morrison |
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a781b83
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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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men
emotional-plague
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Toni Morrison |
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a3f82e3
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They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations...
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Toni Morrison |
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6a8b57d
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We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.
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Toni Morrison |
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02717f0
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Young people, Lord. Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty. Before I was reduced to singsong, I saw all kinds of mating. Most are two-night stands trying to ..
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Toni Morrison |
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1c04c6a
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When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It'll settle you.' 'I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.
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Toni Morrison |
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97590eb
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She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.
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Toni Morrison |