Toni Morrison

...in loving memory

To leave this legacy in words (and deeds):

"Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge."

"The function of freedom is to free someone else."

"If you are free, you need to free somebody else.  If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else."

"This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair, no place for self pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.  We speak, we write, we do language.  That is how civilizations heal."

"You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down."

"You are your best thing."

"Something that is loved is never lost."

" 'Well, if you want my opinion - '

   'I don't,' She said. 'I have my own.' "

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

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

"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."

"Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined."

view other painted portraits of female authors HERE