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91eb270
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But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.
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dreams
thruth
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Toni Morrison |
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f775dc9
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And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is ..
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Toni Morrison |
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cf200c7
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You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.
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Toni Morrison |
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bcac657
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What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it?
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Toni Morrison |
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36c468e
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See? See what you can do? Never mind you can't tell one letter from another, never mind you born a slave, never mind you lose your name, never mind your daddy dead, never mind nothing. Here, this here, is what a man can do if he puts his mind to it and his back in it. Stop sniveling,' [the land] said. 'Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can't take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet..
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inspirational
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Toni Morrison |
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981bea7
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To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.
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slavery
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Toni Morrison |
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59162ef
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Today is always here,' said Sethe. 'Tomorrow, never.
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Toni Morrison |
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b89594c
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the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)
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Toni Morrison |
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588cfa1
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It sounded old. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't "deserve" his family's dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn't even "deserve" to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he "deserve" Hagar's vengeance. But why shouldn't..
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pain
responsibility
sorrow
family
happiness
deserve
maturity
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Toni Morrison |
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d15bc66
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At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens -- that letting go -- you let go because you can.
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Toni Morrison |
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2f6ca73
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The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academ..
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politics
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Toni Morrison |
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a2dd4eb
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And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.
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Toni Morrison |
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f2412e4
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The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.
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Toni Morrison |
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5d3f7f7
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But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.
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Toni Morrison |
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d3016f2
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Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.' Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part.
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Toni Morrison |
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fa985f5
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I wish I'd a knowed more people. I would of loved 'em all. If I'd a knowed more, I would a loved more
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Toni Morrison |
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b80ecf0
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Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.
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Toni Morrison |
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b2aeabd
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It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.
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jealousy
love
ownership
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Toni Morrison |
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8e9cd62
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In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sl..
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longing
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Toni Morrison |
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0896b53
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Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
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Toni Morrison |
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1ee851a
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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.
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vanity
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Toni Morrison |
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6f1fba7
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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?
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Toni Morrison |
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13039cf
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When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees. After situating herself on a huge..
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post-civil-war
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Toni Morrison |
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07d46cb
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She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own se..
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Toni Morrison |
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af70574
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Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?
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Toni Morrison |
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b3ba7b3
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There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.
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Toni Morrison |
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d92a764
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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. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
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Toni Morrison |
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882fe3f
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There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people. She wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass battered and drowned by the se..
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Toni Morrison |
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8ddee2b
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You don't have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.
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Toni Morrison |
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08f0905
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It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves.
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Toni Morrison |
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826ad39
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No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
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Toni Morrison |
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bb89cd1
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Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence.
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Toni Morrison |
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c277811
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You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad."
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Toni Morrison |
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81f9ef6
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In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.
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seasons
weather
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Toni Morrison |
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63577ae
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How come it can't fly no better than a chicken?' Milkman asked. Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.' The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion.
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peacock
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Toni Morrison |
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89e939a
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I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.
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Toni Morrison |
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9798683
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Everything depends on knowing how much," she said, and "Good is knowing when to stop."
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Toni Morrison |
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a42f861
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No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.
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Toni Morrison |
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1a282a9
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I'm crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it's not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow where any blase thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things. Hep. It's the bright steel rocking above the shade below that d..
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Toni Morrison |
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94c1f01
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Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn't even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star.
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deception
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Toni Morrison |
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e6cb21b
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Paul D did not answer because she didn't expect or want him to, but he did know what she meant. Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon - everything belonged to the men who had the guns. Little men, some of them, big men too, each one of whom he could snap like a twig if he wanted to. Men who knew that their manhood ..
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slavery
love
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Toni Morrison |
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67212bd
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Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.
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silence
quiet
stereotype
loud
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Toni Morrison |
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e1fd838
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Jealousy we understood and thought natural... But envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.
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Toni Morrison |
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e7e7f46
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You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.
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Toni Morrison |