THE GENIUS OF TONI MORRISON
I love Toni Morrison. She is the epitome of the word genius, in my opinion, and I strongly feel that she is one of the worlds’ foremost scholars and intellectuals. I had the fortune of reading Toni Morrison Conversations this week, a book full of interviews she has given over the past thirty years of her illustrious career. Here are some of the selections I would like to share.
“Freedom is choosing responsibility.”
“The most spectacular thing in the world is my mind. To me, anyway. That’s where everything is happening.”
“If I’m able to keep learning, putting myself in a position where I can learn, those are major successes.”
“My responsibilities are to do the best work I can do and to be the best human I can be.”
“What’s interesting and compelling to me is how people do give up something in order to make it better for someone else.”
“Corruption always needs a loud voice.”
“Evil: a very simple infantile relationship with other people, which means they don’t exist, it’s only me.”
“Being evil–it’s not interesting to me, intellectually. It’s intellectually lazy. It’s simplex. It only is about more of itself.”
“Being a moral person is not, to me, just doing good deeds. It’s how to live morally in a world that may itself not be interested.”
“Thinking about good is one of the most compelling intellectual ideas there is. It has no peer.”
“You can romanticize history to such an extent that you cannot join the modern world.”
“History can be toxic if you don’t understand it.”
“To constantly learn and change is frightening to some people.”
Knowledge has been served, so eat up.
Posted on June 29, 2011, in Literary Inspiration. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
About one-fifth of the quotes on this list show a glimmer of wisdom.
Two-fifths are old-hat platitudes that many people have spoken many times.
And the remaining two-fifths are capable of cutting in two directions, and being used for evil.
All in all, I myself have expressed as much wisdom and coolness as Toni Morrison expresses, if not more so, in the course of my life. And I have known many others of whom I could say likewise.
Toni Morrison is overrated. She is nothing special. I find that she is top-lofty, and gets on my nerves.
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