Morrison Quotes

Pain was greedy; it demanded all of her attention. ~ Toni Morrison

That's one of the problems with doing anything for a long time. Staying home, for instance. The longer you stay, the more you believe your identity is wrapped up in the people and things around you. You become trapped. It seems as if you fear change because you can't let go of this illusion of yourself as being what? The good granddaughter? The girlfriend who can't choose between her boyfriend and her family? Seems as if your fear of change is really just the same fear of death you mention in your first class. ~ Suzanne Morrison

How come it can't fly no better than a chicken?' Milkman asked.
Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that [stuff]. Wanna fly, you got to give up the [stuff] that weighs you down.'
The peacock jumped onto the hood of the Buick and once more spread its tail, sending the flashy Buick into oblivion. ~ Toni Morrison

I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom. ~ Jim Morrison

And then she knew. Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess. ~ Toni Morrison

As Brian Urquhart has said quite correctly, I don't think that individual countries in the international community can stand aside and let all of these slaughters continue without doing anything. ~ Alex Morrison

I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. ~ Toni Morrison

Daily life took as much as she had. The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out. ~ Toni Morrison

When all the dark clouds roll away And the sun begins to shine I see my freedom from across the way And it comes right in on time Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light And it comes from the sky above Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me And lights my life with love. ~ Van Morrison

Believe in yourself, then others will believe in yourself. ~ Maat Morrison

I don't know why I bother arguing with anybody sometimes, it never changes a damn thing. ~ John Gordon Morrison

I'm a Midwesterner, and everyone in Ohio is excited. I'm also a New Yorker, and a New Jerseyan, and an American, plus I'm an African-American, and a woman. I know it seems like I'm spreading like algae when I put it this way, but I'd like to think of the prize being distributed to these regions and nations and races. ~ Toni Morrison

The message of the Nazarene had been turned into a weapon in some religious power game. 'Look how they love one another' just didn't seem an apt description of the bizarre religious theatre I'd just witnessed. ~ Dylan Morrison

I don't ignore continuity, and try my best to stick as closely to the current status quo as possible, but it's not my primary concern when I start a story. ~ Grant Morrison

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors. ~ Jim Morrison

You can't stop us on the road to freedom, you can't stop us cause our eyes can see. ~ Van Morrison

When I approached 'Animal Man,' I approached it as if it wasn't a reboot, as if the Grant Morrison and Jamie Delano stuff happened. I mean, as much as I could make it all make sense, it still all happened. ~ Jeff Lemire

I didn't love Jim Morrison. There was something very reptilian about him. And I didn't care for his singing, but his band! The Doors were fantastic. ~ Linda Ronstadt

If she answered, he could not hear it, and he certainly couldn't see her, so he went. First he crawled the rocks one by one, one by one, till his hands touched shore and the nursing sound of the sea was behind him. He felt around, crawled off and then stood up. Breathing heavily with his mouth open he took a few tentative steps. The pebbles made him stumble and so did the roots of trees. He threw out his hands to guide and steady his going. By and by he walked steadier, now steadier. The mist lifted and the trees stepped back a bit as if to make the way easier for a certain kind of man. Then he ran. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Looking neither to the left nor to the right. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Lickety-lickety-lickety-split. ~ Toni Morrison

They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there
on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp. ~ Toni Morrison

We will be judged by how well we love. ~ Toni Morrison

I grew up as an only child. My parents weren't great conversationalists. We had a quiet house. I'm not very verbal. ~ Matthew Morrison

I was physically revolted by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and orangeworms hair. ~ Toni Morrison

The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean. ~ Toni Morrison

Know what being a man's pet means. And if you're ever lucky enough to find yourself with the choice, choose the pasture. ~ Stacy Overman Morrison

I'm not comfortable with the idea of my sex appeal, but I know in my job I have to use it. I wish I could say I got to this point in my career based on my talent, but I don't think that's true. ~ Matthew Morrison

Of the few who were not afraid to witness the burial of a witch and who had gone to the cemetery, some had come just to verify her being put away but stayed to sing 'Shall We Gather at the River' for politeness' sake, quite unaware of the bleak promise of their song. Others came to see that nothing go awry, that the shallow-minded and small-hearted kept their meanness at bay, and that the entire event be characterized by that abiding gentleness of spirit to which they themselves had arrived by the simple determination not to let anything--anything at all: not failed crops, not rednecks, lost jobs, sick children, rotten potatoes, broken pipes, bug-ridden flour, third-class coal, educated social workers, thieving insurance men, garlic-ridden hunkies, corrupt Catholics, racist Protestants, cowardly Jews, slaveholding Moslems, jack-leg nigger preachers, squeamish Chinamen, cholera, dropsy or the Black Plague, let alone a strange woman--keep them from their God. ~ Toni Morrison

And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man. ~ Toni Morrison

Sleep is an under-ocean dipped into each night. ~ Jim Morrison

Be always like the sea, than breaking up against cliffs it finds always the force to try again. ~ Jim Morrison

There's always time to launch your dreams ~ Maat Morrison

These characters were like twelve-bar blues or other chord progressions. Given the basic parameters of Batman, different creators could play very different music. ~ Grant Morrison

Yoga probably makes me a better person. ~ Jennifer Morrison

Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races. ~ Toni Morrison

While they are busy showing off, digging other people's graves, hanging themselves on a cross, running wild in the streets, cherries are quietly turning from green to red, oysters are suffering pearls, and children are catching rain in their mouths expecting the drops to be cold but they're not; they are warm and smell like pineapple before they get heavier and heavier, so heavy and fast they can't be caught one at a time. Poor swimmers head for shore while strong ones wait for lightning's silver veins. Bottle-green clouds sweep in, pushing the rain inland where palm trees pretend to be shocked by the wind. ~ Toni Morrison

Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends - and if it never ends, at least we'll have suffered a little less, developed a useful dullness, protected ourselves as much as we could with a little indifference, a little repression, a little deliberate blindness, and a large dose of self-anesthetics. The constant - and very real - fear of being hurt, the fear of death, of intolerable loss, or even of "mere" humiliation, leads each of us, the citizens and prisoners of the conflict, to dampen our own vitality, our emotional and intellectual range, and to cloak ourselves in more and more protective layers until we suffocate. ~ Toni Morrison

I know your soul. It's there in every note". He brushes my lips with his. "You can't fake that. You can't hide it ~ Angela Morrison

Tony Morrison said, 'Can't I love what I criticize, criticize what I love.' ~ Michael Eric Dyson

Merry Christmas" - Bing Crosby singing "Adeste fideles" on The Voice of State Street ~ Joan Wehlen Morrison

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

I have seen without perceiving I have been another man Let me pierce the realm of glamour So I know just what I am. ~ Van Morrison

Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes. ~ Toni Morrison

I pressed her thigh and death smiled ~ Jim Morrison

Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing. ~ Toni Morrison

What excited and challenged her shipmates horrified the churched women and each set believed the other deeply, dangerously flawed. Although they had nothing in common with the views of each other, they had everything in common with one thing: the promise and threat of men.
Here, they agreed, was where security and risk lay. And both had come to terms. ~ Toni Morrison

I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across. ~ Van Morrison

What's the world for you if you can't make it up the way you want it? ~ Toni Morrison

When you hear the music ringin' in your soul
And you feel it in your heart and it grows and grows
And it comes from the backstreet rock & roll and the healing has begun ~ Van Morrison

The love of God is no mere sentimental feeling; it is redemptive power! ~ Charles Clayton Morrison

Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature. ~ Toni Morrison

She was one of the few things abhorrent to him that he could touch and therefore hurt. He poured out on her the sum of all his inarticulate fury and aborted desires. Hating her, he could leave himself intact. ~ Toni Morrison

All it takes is one wrong turn. And there's always one wrong turn. ~ Grant Morrison

It seems that rather than abandon their worldview, many young people are abandoning their lives altogether. I am disturbed to see the number of suicides and suicide attempts by those between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. Many of their suicide notes report they had lost meaning, purpose and a sense that life held any value.

This is no longer just about philosophy. This is about the very real lives we are all trying to make sense of here on Earth. ~ Jon Morrison

Jim Morrison had star quality and he's dead. Star quality's no good to you when you're dead. ~ Neil Walker

The Gate is Straight, Deep and Wide; Break On Through to the other side. ~ Jim Morrison

Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing. ~ Toni Morrison

Whatever happens, whether you get rich or stay poor, ruin your health or live to old age, you always end up back where you started: hungry for the one thing everybody loses - young loving. ~ Toni Morrison

In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams. ~ Toni Morrison

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

Our ancestors are an ever widening circle of hope. ~ Toni Morrison

Into the Music was about the first album where I felt, 'I'm starting here' ... the Wavelength thing, I didn't really feel that was me. ~ Van Morrison

Sometimes Joyce is hilarious. I read Finnegans Wake after graduate school and I had the great good fortune of reading it without any help. I don't know if I read it right, but it was hilarious! I laughed constantly! I didn't know what was going on for whole blocks but it didn't matter because I wasn't going to be graded on it. I think the reason why everyone still has so much fun with Shakespeare is because he didn't have any literary critic. He was just doing it; and there were no reviews except for people throwing stuff on stage. He could just do it. ~ Toni Morrison

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights - if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. ~ Toni Morrison

In retrospect, I now believe this expected donation of ten percent of income to the Fellowship was based on bad exegesis of an old Jewish taxation law that Jesus Himself seemed to completely ignore. ~ Dylan Morrison

Let her go?' asked Son, and he smiled a crooked smile. Let go the woman you had been looking for everywhere just because she was difficult? Because she had a temper, energy, ideas of her own and fought back? Let go a woman whose eyebrows were a study, whose face was enough to engage your attention all your life? Let go a woman who was not only a woman but a sound, all the music he had ever wanted to play, a world and a way of being in it? Let that go? 'I can't,' he said. 'I can't. ~ Toni Morrison

To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The "better life" she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one. ~ Toni Morrison

A hope of something beyond our place and time. This is what books - the best books - give us: a lifeline, a reason to believe, a way to breathe more freely. ~ Blake Morrison

I love 'Batman.' I love the Adam West 'Batman.' I love the animated 'Batman.' The character of Batman can encompass any interpretation, which is what makes that character so brilliant and why it's survived so many different media. ~ Grant Morrison

You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you. ~ Toni Morrison

In the world of the superheroes, everything had value, potential, mystery. Any person, thing, or object could be drafted into service in the struggle against darkness and evil - remade as a weapon or a warrior or a superhero. Even a little bee named Michael - after God's own avenging angel - could pitch in to win the battle against wickedness. ~ Grant Morrison

I can look at a crowd," he said to his friends, "I can just look at it. It's all, uh, very scientific, and I can diagnose the crowd psychologically. Just four of us, properly positioned, can turn the crowd around. We can cure it. We can make love to it. We can make it riot."
Jim's friends looked at him blankly.
"Hey, man," Jim said, "don't you even want to try? ~ Jim Morrison

Ideally, we'd want an Irishman coming in for the job, but, ideally it doesn't really matter. ~ Clinton Morrison

One thing I definitely experienced up here (New York), that maybe I have to sort of cop to feeling defensive about, is since the election, people in my cohort, who are sensitive to portrayals of people in the movie as classist, have had no problem coming up with those sorts of [middle-American] stereotypes about a phantom real person they can blame for re-electing George Bush. ~ Philip Morrison

That Jim Morrison song gets it all wrong. People are strange when you're a stranger, but it's not because they ignore you - it's when they notice you and smile, that's when you realize you're alone out here. Their kindness is what makes you notice how weak you are. That's when you know it's not the city's fault, it's yours. These people are in the same strange town, but they're not letting the strangeness eat them up and turn them into robots. That's just you. ~ Rob Sheffield

You couldn't learn age, but adulthood was there for all. ~ Toni Morrison

Yes " Morrison said dryly. "I'm sure it would have helped with flying the car, if any of us had been calm and rational enough to think of taking a drum out and performing some theme music for your Jame's Bond meets Harry Potter special effects. But since we weren't, now I'm going to drum till you stop looking like something the cat dragged in. Don't argue with me. ~ C.E. Murphy

Did you do it yet?" He was like a teen-age girl wondering about the virginity of her friend, the friend who has a look, a manner newly minted––different, separate, focused somehow. "Did you do it yet? Do you know something both exotic and ordinary that I have not felt? Do you now know what it's like to risk your one and only self? How did it feel? Were you afraid? Did it change you? And if I do it, will it change me too? ~ Toni Morrison

Your head's like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune's all we are. ~ Grant Morrison

Toni Morrison uses the term race talk to capture 'the explicit insertion into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no meaning other than positioning African Americans into the lowest level of the racial hierarchy.' Casual race talk is a key component of white racial framing because it accomplishes the interconnected goals of elevating whites while demeaning people of color; race talk always implies a racial 'us' and 'them'. ~ Robin DiAngelo

I really want some meaning. It used to be easy to toss it off. Now it's harder and harder. You have to navigate just to find something that has nourishment. It's the absence of nourishment. What do you do in place of nourishment? It's usually junk. Either it's junk food or junk clothes or junk ideas. ~ Toni Morrison

I've finally given in, my eyes are shut under the blindfold. I can hear and smell, but I cannot see. My hands are clammy I feel cold yet I am warm. It is what I wanted, but I am now unsure, dubious yet at the same time excited and curious. I would like to think I feel a bit like Alice just before she fell down the hole into the rabbit hole. Yet there are no rabbits here… not even those of the rampant persuasion. ~ LEONORA MORRISON

Most of the songs I wrote are personal. ~ Matthew Morrison

I'm on an Isabel Marant kick. She does an amazing job of making things that are everyday-wearable but also special and a little bit different. I definitely like that she has a '70s western vibe. There's something that's very fun and vintage in what she's doing. ~ Jennifer Morrison

The serpent's objective is clear. He seeks to drive a wedge of doubt into Adam and Eve's confidence in what God has told them. Satan knows the power of undermining a human being's confidence in what God has revealed. Sadly, the serpent's temptation was successful. Adam and Eve second-guessed God's trustworthiness and then rejected his command. They sinned and ate the forbidden fruit. This was the beginning of the fallen world we all experience. All generations following would have a natural bent for rebelling against God and being skeptical or indifferent to what he has said. To this day, Satan's objective has not changed. Though his questions look a little different at times, they all contain the same idea ~ Jon Morrison

She knew Paul D was adding something to her life - something she wanted to count on but was scared to ... His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearable because it was his as well - to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other - the things neither had word-shapes for - well, it would come in time. ~ Toni Morrison

In historical terms women, black people in general, were very attracted to very bright-colored clothing. Most people are frightened by color anyway...They just are. In this culture quiet colors are considered elegant. Civilized Western people wouldn't buy bloodred sheets or dishes. There may be something more to it than what I am suggesting. But the slave population had no access even to what color there was, because they wore slave clothes, hand-me-downs, work clothes made out of burlap and sacking. For them a colored dress would be luxurious; it wouldn't matter whether it was rich or poor cloth . . . just to have a red or a yellow dress. I stripped Beloved of color so that there are only the small moments when Sethe runs amok buying ribbons and bows, enjoying herself the way children enjoy that kind of color. The whole business of color was why slavery was able to last such a long time. It wasn't as though you had a class of convicts who could dress themselves up and pass themselves off. No, these were people marked because of their skin color, as well as other features. So color is a signifying mark. Baby Suggs dreams of color and says, "Bring me a little lavender." It is a kind of luxury. We are so inundated with color and visuals. I just wanted to pull it back so that one could feel that hunger and that delight. ~ Toni Morrison

X-Men is not a story about superheroes, but a story about the ongoing revolutionary struggle between good/new and bad/old. The X-Men are every rebel teenager wanting to change the world and make it better. Humanity is every adult, clinging to the past, trying to destroy the future even as he places all his hopes there. ~ Grant Morrison

The sun and the moon shared the horizon in a distant friendship, each unfazed by the other. ~ Toni Morrison

I always have my passport on me, as well as two currencies. ~ Jennifer Morrison

He had yet to discover what destroyed that desire. But he did not dwell on it. He thought rather of whatever had happened to the curiosity he used to feel. Nothing, nothing, interested him now. Not himself, not other people. Only in drink was there some break, some floodlight, and when that closed, there was oblivion. ~ Toni Morrison

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. ~ Toni Morrison

The kind of clarity crazy people demand from the not-crazy. ~ Toni Morrison

When I look back on my life I come to one simple conclusion: there exists an intelligent, loving Presence in the Cosmos that will ultimately have its desire for relationship with us fulfilled; even our arrogant dismissal of its existence will not stop it in its tracks. The Enlightenment's god, the great idol of free will, lies smashed in pieces in its wake. The jealous Presence patiently draws us homeward like some gigantic electromagnetic beam. The Death Star in reverse. This divinity is, I believe, the 'Abba' of Jesus, a transcendence that will not be boxed in by religious misrepresentation... ~ Dylan Morrison

Words are ugly when they travel in packs. ~ Grant Morrison

Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted. ~ Grant Morrison

For a nickel a month, Lady Jones did what whitepeople thought unnecessary if not illegal: crowded her little parlor with the colored children who had time for and interest in book learning. ~ Toni Morrison

Hell is only the Cringe Eternal and the Place of our Self's Undoing. When Nietzsche proclaimed "God is Dead!" he forgot to add that Satan is also dead and we are free from all that antique tat. ~ Grant Morrison

The girl's face looks greedy, haughty and very lazy. The cream-at-the-top-of-the-milkpail face of someone who will never work for anything; someone who picks up things lying on other people's dressers and is not embarrassed when found out. It is the face of a sneak who glides over to your sink to rinse the fork you have laid by her plate. An inward face
whatever it sees is its own self. You are there, it says, because I am looking at you. ~ Toni Morrison

Think about goodness like you think about gravity. Whether or not you believe in gravity, it is still there. Every day you are affected by gravity regardless of how well you understand the physics of it. In this chapter I am asking whether objective morality is something like gravity operating in accordance with the laws of the universe. Are there some things that are always right and some things that are always wrong? Put another way, has there ever been a time in history where it would have been acceptable for Hitler to kill over five million Jews? Or is mass murder always wrong no matter when or where you are? If mass murder is always wrong, then it turns out that objective moral values and duties do exist. ~ Jon Morrison

How can I set free anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom? ~ Jim Morrison