Toni Morrison

"Riches do not bring about greatness, but greatness brings about riches."

"Being alive is the condition, not the achievement."

"Formal education may teach you how to make a living, but liberation teaches you how to live."

"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get home."

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

"Anger protected her; it was easier than grief."

"Survival is the second step. The first step is imagining that you deserve to survive."

"The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it's to imagine what is possible."

"Peace does not simply mean the absence of conflict; it means the presence of justice."

"Your life and your words are not separate from each other."

"She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man."

"Even as we grieve, there is something exquisite about it."

"The act of choosing is in itself a form of freedom."

"You need another language, not English, to say what this is."

"Wonders never cease if you remain open to them."

"I don't have to be what you want me to be."

"Everybody remembers the first person who gave them permission to be human."

"The willingness to die for a cause is the thing that makes a person alive."

"Shame is a terrible thing, a terrible thing."

"You cannot enslave people if you know they deserve better."

"History is not just something that happens. It's something that we create."

"To get to a place, a lovely place, you don't go in a straight line."

"Love is not a luxury. It is a necessity."

"When you get down to it, slavery is an intellectual concept as much as it is a physical one."

"The past is never just the past; it is alive in us."

"Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark."

"Literature is the most intimate conversation we will have with people."

"Power, true power, is about what you can do for others."

"Everything you can think of, you can create."

"What matters is how you look at it, not what it is."