Toni Morrison
"I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean."
90 Quotes
"I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean."
"لم أطلب قط من تولستوي أن يخط قلمه لأجلي، أنا الفتاة السمراء الصغيرة في لورين، أوهايو. ولم أطلب من جويس ألا يذكر الكاثوليكية أو عالم دبلن. أبدًا. ولا أدري لمَ يُطلب مني أن أشرح لكم حياتكم. لدينا كُتّاب فذّون يقومون بذلك، لكنني لستُ منهم. تلك هي قضية "الشمولية"، وهي كلمة فقدت كل معنى بالنسبة لي، بلا رجاء. لقد كتب فوكنر ما يمكن أن يُسمى أدبًا إقليميًا، ومع ذلك انتشر في كل بقاع الأرض. هذا ما أصبو إليه. لو حاولتُ أن أكتب رواية عالمية، لكانت مجرد ماء. وراء هذا التساؤل يكمن إيحاء بأن الكتابة للسمر هي بطريقة ما تنتقص من قيمة العمل الأدبي. من منظوري، لا وجود إلا للسمر. وعندما أقول "الناس"، فهذا ما أعنيه تمامًا."
Toni Morrison
"But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer."
"ولكن لكي تكتشف حقيقة كيف تموت الأحلام، فلا ينبغي لك أبدًا أن تأخذ كلمة الحالم."
Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye
"As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think."
"عندما تتبوأ مناصب الثقة والسلطة، اسمح لأحلامك أن تسبق تفكيرك قليلاً."
Toni Morrison
"Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous."
"كأي فنانٍ حُرِمَ فَنَّه، غَدَتْ خطيرة."
Toni Morrison
Sula
"You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone."
"يحتاج المرء إلى مجتمع بأكمله لتربية طفل، وقد ربيتُ طفلين بمفردي."
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."
"في مرحلةٍ ما من الحياة، يصبح جمال العالم كافيًا. لا تحتاج حينها لتصويره، أو رسمه، أو حتى تذكره. إنه كافٍ وحسب."
Toni Morrison
"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."
"إن قدرة الكاتب على تخيل ما ليس ذاته، وتأليف الغريب وتغريب المألوف، هي محك قوته."
Toni Morrison
"I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man."
"لا أرى في قيادة المرأة للبيت مشكلة أو تفكك"
Toni Morrison
"Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us."
Toni Morrison
"We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that."
Toni Morrison
"There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried."
Toni Morrison
"If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression."
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
"Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul."
Toni Morrison
The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993
"“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?”"
Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon
"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
Toni Morrison
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