Toni Morrison

I want to remind us all that art is dangerous. I want to remind you of the history of artists who have been murdered, slaughtered, imprisoned, chopped up, refused entrance. The history of art, whether it's in music or written or what have you, has always been bloody, because dictators and people in office and people who want to control and deceive know exactly the people who will disturb their plans.And those people are artists. They're the ones that sing the truth. And that is something that society has got to protect. But when you enter that field, no matter whether that's Sonia's poetry or Ta-Nehisi's rather startlingly clear prose, it's a dangerous pursuit. Somebody's out to get you. You have to know it before you start, and do it under those circumstances, because it is one of the most important things that human beings do.

For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.

This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.

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

Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.

Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty....A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles.

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. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens _ that letting go _ you let go because you can.

Black women were armed, black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.

A woman is an important somebody and sometimes you win the triple crown: good food, good sex, and good talk. Most men settle for any one, happy as a clam if they get two. But listen, let me tell you something. A good man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to. Don__ matter. You find one, stay there. You see a scary one, make tracks.

Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green changed. Then the vine threads came, then the buds. By the time the white petals died and the mint-colored berry poked out, the leaf shine was gilded tight and waxy.

I know it's trash: just another story made up to scare wicked females and correct unruly children. But it's all I have. I know I need something else. Something better. Like a story that shows how brazen women can take a good man down. I can hum to that.

Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I'll tell you where. From that little hog's gut that hangs between your legs. Well, let me tell you something... you will need more than that. I don't know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that.... You are a sad, pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man. I hope your little hog's gut stands you in good stead, and you take good care of it, because you don't have anything else.

Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network.

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

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.

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

All of that art-for-art__-sake stuff is BS,_ she declares. __hat are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren__ writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn__. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, __e love the status quo._ We__e just dirtied the word __olitics,_ made it sound like it__ unpatriotic or something._ Morrison laughs derisively. __hat all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was __o, no, no; there__ only aesthetics._ My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I__ not interested in art that is not in the world. And it__ not just the narrative, it__ not just the story; it__ the language and the structure and what__ going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story.

I'm me," she whispered. "Me"Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant."I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me."Every time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut."Me," she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, "I want... I want to be... wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.