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afcc0ef
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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 a free man is never safe.
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people
the-bluest-eye
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Toni Morrison |
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e5ce6a5
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I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.
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Toni Morrison |
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5e8b9ab
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How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.
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human-condition
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Toni Morrison |
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27893fb
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Now he knew why he loved her so. Without ever leaving the ground, she could fly. 'There must be another one like you,' he whispered to her. 'There's got to be at least one more woman like you.
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Toni Morrison |
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ef2da7f
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Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live
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society
race
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Toni Morrison |
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06852f1
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You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.
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Toni Morrison |
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c68078c
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the change was adjustment without improvement.
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Toni Morrison |
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fb1f9b5
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You your best thing, Sethe. You are.
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Toni Morrison |
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4649cf5
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But Jude,' she would say, 'you knew me. All those days and years, Jude, you knew me. My ways and my hands and how my stomach folded and how we tried to get Mickey to nurse and how about that time when the landlord said...but you said...and I cried, Jude. You knew me and had listened to the things I said in the night, and heard me in the bathroom and laughed at my raggedy girdle and I laughed too because I knew you too, Jude. So how could yo..
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Toni Morrison |
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637f21d
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Love is divine only and difficult always.
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Toni Morrison |
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ab86514
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you got two feet, Sethe, not four." he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; tactless and quiet."
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Toni Morrison |
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f0a01a2
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They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds-- cooled --and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.
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Toni Morrison |
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f4087ff
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It hit her like a sledgehammer, and it was then that she knew what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest. Knowing that she would hate him long and well filled her with pleasant anticipation, like when you know you are going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the happy signs. Hating BoyBoy, she could get on with it, and have the safety, the thrill, the consistency of that hatred as long as she wanted or needed it to d..
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Toni Morrison |
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9ecdb3c
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What you do to children matters. And they might never forget.
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Toni Morrison |
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f202a3b
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Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.
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Toni Morrison |
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b1e5336
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The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.' Sula said that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell.
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Toni Morrison |
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c28686c
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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 sta..
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relationships
love
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Toni Morrison |
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32614fb
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Whose house is this? Whose night keeps out the light In here? Say, who owns this house? It's not mine. I dreamed another, sweeter, brighter With a view of lakes crossed in painted boats; Of fields wide as arms open for me. This house is strange. Its shadows lie. Say, tell me, why does its lock fit my key?
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Toni Morrison |
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48dd595
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Every sentence, every word, was new to them and they listened to what he said like bright-eyed ravens, trembling in their eagerness to catch & interpret every sound in the universe.
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Toni Morrison |
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8913903
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If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.
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Toni Morrison |
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140854a
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Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed ..
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stereotypes
racism
history
blacks
whites
race-relations
racism-in-america
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Toni Morrison |
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c571fb9
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Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.
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Toni Morrison |
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c9b5bb1
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It's nice when grown people whisper to each other under the covers. Their ecstasy is more a leaf-sigh than bray and the body is the vehicle, not the point. They reach, grown people, for something beyond, way beyond and way, way down underneath tissue. They are remembering while they whisper the carnival dolls they won and the Baltimore boats they never sailed on. The pears they let hang on the limb because if they plucked them, they would b..
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Toni Morrison |
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7b53b87
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the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. it was a fine cry -- loud and long -- but it had no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
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Toni Morrison |
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4a1db27
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I sure did live in this world.' 'Really? What have you got to show for it?' 'Show? To who? I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me.' '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.
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Toni Morrison |
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07a23d0
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I don't think many people appreciate silence or realize that it is as close to music as you can get.
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Toni Morrison |
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f50d068
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How come it can't fly no better than a chicken?" "Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."
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Toni Morrison |
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a5ea7de
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Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.
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Toni Morrison |
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285bcfc
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For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.
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Toni Morrison |
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43f8d60
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There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises....
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Toni Morrison |
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26e8d3c
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It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.
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Toni Morrison |
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d9246eb
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Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.
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Toni Morrison |
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605e44f
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I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess ..
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toni-morrison
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Toni Morrison |
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c81ef65
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There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks
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Toni Morrison |
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c4de1ee
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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,..
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Toni Morrison |
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3653139
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Listen, baby, people do funny things. Specially us. The cards are stacked against us and just trying to stay in the game, stay alive and in the game, makes us do funny things. Things we can't help. Things that make us hurt one another. We don't even know why.
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Toni Morrison |
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f85d7ca
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Her passions were narrow but deep.
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passion
dreams
passions
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Toni Morrison |
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71ef0e7
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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 us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.
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Toni Morrison |
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de4398f
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Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter--like the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frie..
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Toni Morrison |
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eae43c4
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I used to think to think it was my rememory. You know. 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 rememory, 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 it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or..
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Toni Morrison |
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f22a0de
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They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in bewteen.
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Toni Morrison |
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b320839
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So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.
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Toni Morrison |
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fb15058
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Here I am not the one to throw out. No one steals my warmth and shoes because I am small. No one handles my backside. No one whinnies like sheep or goat because I drop in fear and weakness. No one screams at the sight of me. No one watches my body for how it is unseemly. With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me.
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Toni Morrison |
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af1e911
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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.
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Toni Morrison |