Toni Morrison

"The price of progress is often the loss of something we did not know we valued."

"To be authentic is to disappoint those who wanted you to be someone else."

"We all carry stories inside us that need to be told."

"The deepest form of respect is to truly listen to what someone is saying."

"Nothing is more fragile than the balance we attempt to maintain between ourselves and others."

"To understand yourself is to begin to understand the world."

"The act of creating beauty is an act of defiance against despair."

"What we inherit from the past is both a burden and a gift."

"If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down."

"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

"The function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work."

"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language."

"There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear."

"You are your best thing."

"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was."

"Narrating her life, she constructs her life."

"The ability to imagine something gives you the ability to create it."

"If you want to know about the future, you must release the past."

"I tell my students one thing: the difference between ready and not ready is the difference between success and failure."

"Vulnerability is not weakness; it is authenticity."

"We are never free until we acknowledge our debts and pay them forward."

"The function of memory is to provide a foundation for identity."

"Writing is a form of resistance and transformation."

"In this place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass."

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly."

"You cannot make homes of human beings. Homes are made of shelter and memory."

"Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice."

"The past is a place of pride; the future a place of promise."

"To get her to leave, I would have to leave her myself."

"The roots of racism are too deep to be destroyed by any single generation."