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0c18b29
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I don't care what she is. Grown don't mean a thing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.
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Toni Morrison |
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1194be0
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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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racism
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Toni Morrison |
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084bb5b
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We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.
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Toni Morrison |
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cd0193e
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Sula was wrong. Hell ain't things lasting forever. Hell is change." Not only did men leave and children grow up and die, but even the misery didn't last. One day she wouldn't even have that. This very grief that had twisted her into a curve on the floor and flayed her would be gone. She would lose that too. Why, even in hate here I am thinking of what Sula said."
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Toni Morrison |
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f7a32a2
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Correct what you can; learn from what you can't.
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Toni Morrison |
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0eef41d
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O Lord, Sula," she cried, "girl, girl, girlgirlgirl." 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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Toni Morrison |
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3d61fc8
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When fear rules, obedience is the only survival choice.
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Toni Morrison |
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caf4dea
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Only her tight, tight eyes were left. They were always left...They were everything. Everything was there, in them...Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.
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Toni Morrison |
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bddff00
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He can't value you more than you value yourself.
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strength
love
value
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Toni Morrison |
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a9462e3
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Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and after telling me how many feet I have, "goodbye" would break me to pieces. Ain't that sweet. "So long," she murmured from the far side of the trees."
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Toni Morrison |
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422a525
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But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.
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Toni Morrison |
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ad78e9c
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Nobody gave you to me. Nobody said that's the one for you. I picked you out. Wrong time, yep, and doing wrong by my wife. 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. And I made up my mind to follow you too." Joe Trace"
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love
mind-jazz
toni-morrison
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Toni Morrison |
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0077ff0
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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.... People with no imagination feed it with sex -- the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds..
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Toni Morrison |
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64fb34c
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The hills below crouched on all fours under the weight of the rainforest where liana grew and soldier ants marched in formation. Straight ahead they marched, shamelessly single-minded, for soldier ants have no time for dreaming. Almost all of them are women and there is so much to do - the work is literally endless. So many to be born and fed, then found and buried. There is no time for dreaming. The life of their world requires organizatio..
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Toni Morrison |
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2ff9b35
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You looked at them and wondered why the 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. The mast had said, "You are ugly people." They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, i..
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Toni Morrison |
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39eff6f
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It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In this manner he instituted National Suicide Day.
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Toni Morrison |
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6c820a4
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Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses - young loving.
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Toni Morrison |
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9c1dd78
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A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.
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Toni Morrison |
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91e2946
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When they fall in love with a city, it is for forever and it is like forever.
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Toni Morrison |
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eaec7a7
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Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. Throughout this fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: ...she knew there was nothing to fear.
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Toni Morrison |
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4934f98
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Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.
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Toni Morrison |
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cc77148
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Lay my head on the railroad line. Train come along; pacify my mind.
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Toni Morrison |
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b8b8954
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Come on, girl. Don't cry," whispered Frank. "Why not? I can be miserable if I want to. You don't need to try and make it go away. It shouldn't go away. It's just as sad as it ought to be and I'm not going to hide from what's true just because it hurts." Cee wasn't sobbing anymore, but the tears were still running down her cheeks."
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Toni Morrison |
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0c90881
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Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.
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Toni Morrison |
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76cf7f5
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They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the ..
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Toni Morrison |
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d35a651
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The human body is robust. It can gather strength when it's in mortal danger.
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fear
death
strength
danger
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Toni Morrison |
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b0f689d
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But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house. [...] A man ain't nothing but a man,' said Baby Suggs. 'But a son? Well now, that's somebody.
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Toni Morrison |
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d691b9d
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I was so sure it would happen. That the past was an abused record with no choice but to repeat itself at the crack and no power on earth could lift the arm that held the needle.
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Toni Morrison |
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6184764
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Hospitality is gold in this City; you have to be clever to figure out how to be welcoming and defensive at the same time. When to love something and when to quit. If you don't know how, you can end up out of control or controlled by some outside thing like that hard case last winter.
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Toni Morrison |
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0f2c5ec
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fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like. Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140)
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Toni Morrison |
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ea66c7e
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She was fierce in the presence of death, heroic even, as she was at no other time. Its threat gave her direction, clarity, audacity.
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death
fearlessdirection
clarity
fierce
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Toni Morrison |
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ebf526d
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Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
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Toni Morrison |
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8bf3499
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He read greedily but understood selectively, choosing the bits and pieces of other men's ideas that supported whatever predilection he had at the moment.
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Toni Morrison |
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291d085
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It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.
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Toni Morrison |
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6c4236c
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When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made it up,' she thought. Then it came to her - the name of the song and all its lyrics just as she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, 'There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have sung all the songs there are.
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Toni Morrison |
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6481c0f
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Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.
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Toni Morrison |
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4db1ed4
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She became, and her process of becoming was like most of ours: she developed a hatred for things that mystified or obstructed her; acquired virtues that were easy to maintain; assigned herself a role in the scheme of things; and harked back to simpler times for gratification.
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Toni Morrison |
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1f2ed4a
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And the City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its curbstones, offering you melons and green apples on the corner. Racks of yellow head scarves; strings of Egyptian beads. Kansas fried chicken and something with raisins call attention to an open window where the aroma seems to lurk. And if that's not enough, doors to speakeasies stand ajar and in that cool dark place a clarinet coughs and cl..
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Toni Morrison |
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76e1633
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They shoot the white girl first, but the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are 17 miles from a town which has 90 miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the convent, but there is time, and the day has just begun. They are nine. Over twice the number of the women, they are obliged to stampede or kill, and they have the paraphernalia for either requirement--rope, a palm leaf cross, handc..
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Toni Morrison |
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98b046d
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They laughed too, even Rose Dear shook her head and smiled, and suddenly the world was right side up. Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.
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laughter
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Toni Morrison |
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87c2cb1
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Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you. Seek your own land. You young and a woman and there's serious limitation in both, but you are a person too. Don't let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are. That's slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.
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Toni Morrison |
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72c327f
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Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there. By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wi..
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Toni Morrison |
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796580a
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And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never again. They killed a boss so often and so completely they had to bring him back to life to pulp him one more time. Tasting hot mealcake among pine trees, they beat it away. Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. Making them thin..
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Toni Morrison |
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8a5d8e6
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The best thing she was, was her children.
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motherhood
mothers
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Toni Morrison |