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Toni Morrison Quotes about Art

All Toni Morrison Quotes Age Art quotes Character Children Choices College Community Country Desire Diversity Earth Evil Falling In Love Feelings Friendship Giving Giving Up Hate Hatred Heart Home House Hurt Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Language Leaving Life Literature Loneliness Love Lying Magic Meaning Of Life Memories Nature Pain Passion Past Racism Reading Reality Responsibility Running School Silence Singing Skins Sleep Struggle Students Today Violence Waiting War Winter Writing

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.

Art, Pain, Important

"No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear" by Toni Morrison, www.thenation.com. March 23, 2015.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

Art, Waiting, Waiting For You

It's important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

Art, Years, Racism

"Black Studies Center public dialogue. Pt. 2 (A Humanist View)", May 30, 1975.

I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense, but not irrational, nor naïve - because art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

Art, Journey, Cost

FaceBook post by Toni Morrison from May 29, 2013

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

Art, Bearing Witness, Circumstances

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.

Beautiful, Art, Political

Toni Morrison, Carolyn C. Denard (2008). “What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction”, p.64, Univ. Press of Mississippi

From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.

Inspirational, Graduation, Art

There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.

Art, Civilization, Drawing

Black people's music is in a class by itself and always has been. There's nothing like it. The reason for that is because it was not tampered with by white people. It was not on the media. It was not anywhere except where black people were. And it is one of the art forms in which black people decided what is good in it. Nobody told them. What surfaced and what floated to the top, were the giants and the best.

Art, Media, Class

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.

Art, Order, Restoration

Interview with Don Swaim, 1987.

You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving - thats what's useful for art.

Art, Needs, Looks

Interview with Don Swaim, 1987.

In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

Art, Discipline, Imagination

Sula (1973)

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

Art, African American, Tolerance

Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.258, Univ. Press of Mississippi

I know there's some poetry that sort of sounds like daisies, but most of the good poetry is also [political], you can feel the heartbeat; it's about some situation that concerns human beings under duress. It's suggesting a solution, or just acknowledging that [the situation] exists. Art does that.

Art, Political, Duress

Source: theharvardadvocate.com

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

Art, Artist, Form

There are some very powerful contributions to knowledge in the scientific world or the legal world, but art is singular. That's why every dictator gets rid of the artists first. They burn the books and execute the artists first. Then they get on with whatever else they're interested in. Art might do something. It's dangerous.

Art, Powerful, Book

Source: theharvardadvocate.com

All art is knowing when to stop.

Art, Knowing, Art Is

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