Toni Morrison Differences Quotations

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

I know what every colored woman in this country is doing... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises.... If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest, not what pays

Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you.

The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.

What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?

When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?

In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended.

Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.