Famous quotes by Novelists

"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I like marriage. The idea"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"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, Novelist

"A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book!"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"The body is ready to have babies. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"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, Novelist

"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"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"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"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate"

J. R. R. Tolkien, Novelist

"I wish life was not so short, he thought. Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about"

J. R. R. Tolkien, Novelist

"I am told that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it"

J. R. R. Tolkien, Novelist

"Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense"

Leo Rosten, Novelist

"The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps is what makes him different from others"

Leo Rosten, Novelist

"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it"

Leo Rosten, Novelist

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