Toni Morrison

"You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone."

"Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form."

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough."

"There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people."

"Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us it is also about me and you. Just the two of us."

"I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man."