The Measure of Our Lives Quotes

“If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.”
― Toni Morrison, The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom

“This is the it you've been looking for.”
― Toni Morrison, The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom

“Narrative fiction provides a controlled wilderness an opportunity to be and to become the Other. The stranger. With sympathy, clarity, and the risk of self-examination. In this iteration, for me the author, Beloved the girl, the haunter, is the ultimate Other. Clamoring, forever clamoring for a kiss.”
― Toni Morrison, The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom

“All narrative begins for me as listening. When I read, I listen. When I write, I listen-- for silence, inflection, rhythm, rest.”
― Toni Morrison, The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom

“Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter-- like the throb of a heart made of jelly.”
― Toni Morrison, The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom

“In Ohio seasons are theatrical. Each one enters like a prima donna, convinced its performance is the reason the world has people in it.”
― Toni Morrison, The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom

“Our past is bleak. Our future dim. But I am not reasonable. A reasonable man adjusts to his environment. And unreasonable man does not. All progress, therefore, depends on the unreasonable man. I prefer not to adjust to my environment. I refuse the prison of ‘I’ and choose the open spaces of ‘we.’ ”
― Toni Morrison, The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom