Below you’ll find fifteen book excerpts and quotes from Toni Morrison. On August 6 of 2019, the world lost this amazing author, poet, humanitarian.
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When my husband told me that this wonderful woman passed, I felt a weight in my chest — what a loss for this world.
Below you’ll find fifteen book excerpts and quotes from Toni Morrison, but I quickly want to tell you the one small thing she said that changed my life.
I had the opportunity to listen to Toni Morrison speak in my twenties. I studied literature in college, and Toni Morrison was one of my favorite authors. My alma mater was hosting a small engagement at the university, and my husband got us tickets.
She spoke on a variety of topics, but toward the end of her talk, she went on a rant about smiling. She explained…
So often we go about our days speaking with and smiling kindly at strangers who we’ll never see again, then we go home and unpleasently unleash our stress and exhaustion on our families.
She reminded us that, while common courtesies are important,
We need to save some of our patience, kindness, and smiles for the end of the day, when we reconnect with the people we love, as they deserve these things from us.
This made me pause.
There is something to be said for unwinding with the people who unconditionally love us at the end of the day.
But then I thought about how I’d spend my day at work patiently interacting with co-workers, using my please and thank yous with waitresses at lunch, handing out smiles to people I’d pass in the parking lot … then I’d come home exhausted after a long day and leave that public-level kindness at the door.
When my husband and I heard Toni Morrison speak, we didn’t have children yet. Still, this small rant of hers about smiles stuck with me over the years, and it is an integrated part of our family life.
Over the years, I’ve worked with my girls to teach them the joy of small gestures of kindness in our home.
Simple things like pausing and greeting family members lovingly when they get home, making eye contact at dinner, saying please + thank you’s to our partners, setting down your phone if someone is speaking to you …
There are so many everyday kindnesses we show strangers that our families deserve.
Toni Morrison’s exquisite use of language and richly detailed narratives changed my perspectives of history and the world, and this small rant changed my day-to-day family life.
15 Book Excerpts + Quotes from Toni Morrison
“Your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.”
― Toni Morrison“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye“Today is always here. Tomorrow, never.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved“You wanna fly, you got to give up the thing that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison“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.” ― Toni Morrison
“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.” ― Toni Morrison, Beloved
“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon“I see your life as already artful, just waiting and ready for you to make art.”
― Toni Morrison“Lonely was much better than alone.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye“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.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
― Toni Morrison“Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don’t think it’s any of that — it’s helpless … it’s absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers … and anger doesn’t provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever.” [Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]”
― Toni Morrison“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
― Toni Morrison“You are your best thing”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.”
― Toni Morrison
And today, on this day of loss, may we all remember that…
“Something that is loved is never lost.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved
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