Toni

“….I was always a little bored by demonstrations of evil. They relied on the same things. I used to say it always has this top hat and a cape and a tuxedo and a cane, and it has all this stuff, glamour and costume, maybe even a little theme music.

But goodness never has anything, because it doesn’t want anything. It can’t use anything. It’s just there…

I think what happened is World War I, when goodness, and certainly after World War II, when being a good person was trivial, almost silly. A character could only be understood to be good if he was stupid. He was never clever or sophisticated or even well educated….

….the good few books that I get and read sometimes have extraordinary, brilliant, beautiful language, but the thrust and the effort in the language is toward trying to explain something that is corrupt or lacking. If not reaching the heights of evil, it lurks around evil, and that’s what’s supposed to interest the reader….

It’s not interesting to me. It’s too easy, if you get my drift. Goodness is really and truly hard. You can’t seduce it. So writing and trying to find language for it has been probably all I have ever done.” ~ Toni Morrison

“I want to remind us all that art is dangerous.

I want to remind you of the history of artists who have been murdered, slaughtered, imprisoned, chopped up, and refused entrance. The history of art, whether it’s in music or written or what have you, has always been bloody, because dictators and people in office and people who want to control and deceive know exactly the people who will disturb their plans.

And those people are artists. They’re the ones who tell the truth. And it’s something that society has got to protect.

But when you enter that field, no matter where you are, whether it’s Sonia’s poetry, or Toshi’s music, or Ta-Nehisi’s rather startlingly clear prose, it’s a dangerous pursuit, and somebody is out to get you.

You have to know it before you start and do it under those circumstances, because it is one of the most important things that human beings do. That’s what we do.”~ Toni Morrison