Writer Toni Quotes & Sayings

I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now. — Toni Morrison

The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing.It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects. — Toni Morrison

A consecrated space experientially reminds you that there is much more to life than you think. — Jaggi Vasudev

I think being an editor really helped me take other people's notes on my writing. I'd get a note like 'It's too wet' or 'The first couple chapters are good, but then the rest of the pages were so wet that they were completely illegible' or 'Did you dip this in Sprite? This smells like Sprite. Why would you dip your novel in Sprite?' And instead of pushing back, I'd listen. That's an incredibly important skill for a young writer to have. — Toni Morrison

Author Toni Morrison swats aside other possible sources of her success and says that the ONLY reason she is a great writer is because when she walked into a room as a child her father's face lit up. — Donald Miller

There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy--Normal mailer, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, William F. Buckley, Jr., Hunter Thompson, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers--that we assume that when they go to work the words just flow. Nobody thinks of the effort they made every morning to turn on the switch. You also have to turn on the switch. Nobody is going to do it for you. — William Zinsser

If you have a painting in you, paint. If you have a song to sing, sing. Don't judge your creation. Just create it. Banish doubt and fear and step out of your own way if you have to. Write if you're a writer and invent if you're an inventor. Do what you were born to do. Only then will you know a remarkable life. — Toni Sorenson

People say that bad memories cause the most pain, but it's actually the good ones that drive you insane. — Kid Cudi

As spiritual searchers we need to become freer and freer of the attachment to our own smallness in which we get occupied with me-me-me. Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes. If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy. Also recalling our own experiences in which we acted generously or with compassion for the simple delight of it without expectation of any gain can give us more confidence in the existence of a deeper goodness from which we may deviate. (39) — Ravi Ravindra

When you put on the headset, you want to be tricked; you want your mind to believe you are actually teleported to this new virtual place. — Brendan Iribe

What?" I demand, too tired and frazzled to be polite. "Did you think I didn't care? Do you think I'm not human?"
"No," he replies. "I think you are royal. — Amy Ewing

I feel like today we always glorify the young, just-plucked-from-college writer. But it's much harder to start writing later, in middle age, struggling on a book around a full-time job and family. — Toni Morrison

The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one and it would not be a wasted life. — Ken Watanabe

We had all these things to deal with - houses full of people and John going to jail, guys from New York saying 'don't worry about anything.' So it was really confusing. — Michael Davis

A writer's life and work are not a gift to humankind; they are its necessity. — Toni Morrison

Being able to wait without purpose in the state of highest tension ... without continually asking yourself: Shall I be able to manage it? Wait patiently, as see what comes - and how it comes! — Eugen Herrigel

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call literature is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche. — Toni Morrison

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither ... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger. — Toni Morrison

Solitude, competitiveness and grief are the unavoidable lot of a writer only when there is no organization or network to which he can turn. — Toni Morrison

If the world is ever conquered for our Lord, it is not by ministers, nor by office-bearers, nor by the great, and noble and mighty, but by every member of Christ's body being a working member; doing his work; filling his own sphere; holding his own post; and saying to Jesus, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? — Thomas Guthrie

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's [Right Whale] expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years. — Herman Melville

The two endorsements I'm most proud of come from Isabel Wilkerson and Toni Morrison. The latter is the greatest American fiction writer of our time, and the former is on her way to being the greatest American nonfiction writer of our time. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

PSA62.9 Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity. — Anonymous

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there. — Toni Cade Bambara

It's crazy when you think about the 'Apes' franchise and how dark all of the endings are and how dark the movies are, and yet there's something very pleasurable about these movies. It really comes down to the potency of this idea, of seeing intelligent apes. — Matt Reeves

The purpose of a writer is to make revolution irresistible. — Toni Cade Bambara

I do not believe it is right to identify Islam with violence. This is not right or true. — Pope Francis

As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer. — Toni Morrison

On Easter we wrap up pretty, little decorated eggs symbolizing life and renewal. We do this because of the intangibility of a promised gift, which is the eventual resurrection of the body, restored to its finest forever state. Easter celebrates life and the idea of its eternal value, most notably the life of the gift-giver who demands nothing in return. He is your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Sex is difficult to write about because it's just not sexy enough. The only way to write about it is not to write much. Let the reader bring his own sexuality into the text. A writer I usually admire has written about sex in the most off-putting way. There is just too much information. — Toni Morrison

I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer. — Toni Morrison

I think it is best to know what you are and make peace with it. — Sarah McCarry

We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious. — Toni Morrison