Toni Morrison Quotes

Slavery broke the world in half, it broke it in every way. It broke Europe. It made them into something else, it made them slave masters, it made them crazy. You can’t do that for hundreds of years and it not take a toll. They had to dehumanize, not just the slaves but themselves.

How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever… There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.

We have to acknowledge that the thing we call ‘literature’ is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked.