Toni Morrison’s Beloved is the story of a family of former slaves. This is an innovative portrait of a woman haunted by a malevolent spirit. Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved in 1988. From 1981 to 2006, The New York Times ranked “Beloved” as the best work of American fiction. Here, QuotesGeeks gathered Top 60 Toni Morrison beloved quotes to feel the real taste of this fiction!
About Toni Morrison:
Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison was born on February 18, 1931. This American novelist Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio. She was also known as an essayist, book editor, and college professor. Morrison was a B.A. in English from Howard University and earned a master’s degree from Cornell University. Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in 1988 but she gained worldwide recognition by winning the Nobel Prize award in 1993.
Top 60 Toni Morrison Beloved Quotes:
01.
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison
02.
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
― Toni Morrison
03.
“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.“
― Toni Morrison
04.
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”
― Toni Morrison
05.
“He wants to put his story next to hers.”
― Toni Morrison
06.
“The desire, let alone the gesture,to meet her needs was good enough to loft her spirits to the place where she could take the next step: ask for some clarifying word; some advice about how to keep on with a brain greedy for news nobody could live with in a world happy to provide it.”
― Toni Morrison
07.
“Something that is loved is never lost.”
― Toni Morrison
08.
“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.“
― Toni Morrison
09.
“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”
― Toni Morrison
10.
“You are your best thing.“
— Toni Morrison
11.
“Today is always here,’ said Sethe. ‘Tomorrow, never.“
— Toni Morrison
12.
“Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability.”
― Toni Morrison
13.
“Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn’t allowed to be and stay what I was [ … ] School teacher changed me. I was something else and that something else was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub.”
― Toni Morrison
14.
“Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder.”
― Toni Morrison
15.
“I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.”
― Toni Morrison
16.
“If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.”
― Toni Morrison
17.
“The threads of malice creeping toward him from Beloved’s side of the table were held harmless in the warmth of Sethe’s smile.”
― Toni Morrison
18.
“Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.”
― Toni Morrison
19.
“. . .there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople. ‘They don’t know when to stop,’ she said, and returned to her bed, pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever.”
― Toni Morrison
20.
“You looking good.”
― Toni Morrison
“Devil’s confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.”
21.
“How loose the silk. How jailed down the juice.”
― Toni Morrison
22.
“Rainwater held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe.”
― Toni Morrison
23.
“Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city.”
― Toni Morrison
24.
“It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves.”
― Toni Morrison
25.
“And then she knew. Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess.”
― Toni Morrison
26.
“You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face.”
― Toni Morrison
27.
“Men who knew their manhood lay in their guns and were not even embarrassed by the knowledge that without gunshot fox would laugh at them.”
― Toni Morrison
28.
“You looking good.”
― Toni Morrison
“Devil’s confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.”
29.
“Amy dragged her eyes over Sethe’s face as though she would never give out so confidential a piece of information as that to a perfect stranger.”
― Toni Morrison
30.
“To go back to the original hunger was impossible.”
― Toni Morrison
31.
“More it hurt more better it is. Can’t nothing heal without pain, you know.”
― Toni Morrison
32.
“A blessing she was reckless enough to take for granted, lean on, as though Sweet Home was one… A bigger fool never lived.”
― Toni Morrison
33.
“Slave life; freed life–everyday was a test and a trial. Nothing could be counted on in a world where even you were a solution you were a problem.”
― Toni Morrison
34.
“Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder.”
― Toni Morrison
35.
“God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so.”
― Toni Morrison
36.
“lay it all down, sword and shield.”
― Toni Morrison
37.
“If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world.”
― Toni Morrison
38.
“To eat, walk and sleep anywhere was life as good as it got.”
― Toni Morrison
39.
“Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had an appetite for color.”
― Toni Morrison
40.
“The best thing was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one.”
― Toni Morrison
41.
“Move. Walk. Run. Hide. Steal and move on.”
― Toni Morrison
42.
“To get to a place where you could love anything you chose—not to need permission for desire—well now, that was freedom.”
― Toni Morrison
43.
“Her eyes, fixed on the window, are so expressionless he is not sure she will know who he is. There is too much light here in this room. Things look sold.”
― Toni Morrison
44.
“Rainwater held on to pine needles for dear life and Beloved could not take her eyes off Sethe.”
― Toni Morrison
45.
“The disease they suffered now was a mere inconvenience compared to the devastation they remembered.”
― Toni Morrison
46.
“Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a Cincinnati horizon for life’s principal joy was reckless indeed.”
― Toni Morrison
47.
“Close to the fire you could.”
― Toni Morrison
48.
“They began to pilfer in earnest, and it became not only their right but their obligation.”
― Toni Morrison
49.
“When he was drifting, thinking only about the next meal and night‘s sleep, when everything was packed tight in his chest, he had no sense of failure, of things not working out. Anything that worked at all worked out.”
― Toni Morrison
50.
“THERE IS a loneliness that can be rocked.”
― Toni Morrison
51.
“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison
52.
“She heard it as though it were what language was made for.”
― Toni Morrison
53.
“Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something.”
― Toni Morrison
54.
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
― Toni Morrison
55.
“If you can’t count they can cheat you. If you can’t read they can beat you.”
― Toni Morrison
56.
“Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn’t get interested in leaving life or living it.”
― Toni Morrison
57.
“Can’t nothing heal without pain, you know.”
― Toni Morrison
58.
“She opened the door, walked in and locked it tight behind her.”
― Toni Morrison
59.
“If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away.”
― Toni Morrison
60.
“Well, Lu, velvet is like the world was just born. Clean and new and so smooth.”
― Toni Morrison
Major characters of Beloved (novel)
Sethe: Sethe is the protagonist of the novel.
Beloved: Beloved is a young woman and central to the novel.
Paul D: One of the enslaved men from Sweet Home.
Denver: Denver is Sethe’s only child.
Baby Suggs: Baby Suggs is Sethe’s mother-in-law.
Halle: Halle is the husband of Sethe and the son of Baby Suggs.
Amy Denver: Amy Denver is a young White girl.
Top 5 Awards that won Beloved:
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1988
- Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award
- Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1988
- Melcher Book Award
- Lyndhurst Foundation Award
Toni Morrison Top 5 notable works:
- The Bluest Eye (1970)
- Sula (1973)
- Song of Solomon (1977)
- Tar Baby (1981)
- Beloved (1987)
Toni Morrison Top 5 Notable awards:
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
- American Book Award
- Presidential Medal of Freedom
- National Humanities Meda
FAQs Related to Toni Morrison’s Beloved Quotes
#1. What does Beloved represent in “Beloved”?
Ans: In “Beloved” Beloved represents the horrible past of slavery returned to haunt the present.
#2. What are the major themes of beloved?
Ans:
- Motherhood
- Mother-daughter relationships
- Effects of slavery
- Manhood
- Family relationships
- Pain
- Community
#3. Why did Sethe kill her daughter Beloved?
Ans: Sethe did not want her daughter to be subjected to the trauma of slavery that’s why she killed Beloved.
#4. What is the moral of Beloved?
Ans: The moral of Beloved is-“Judgment is its condemnation of all forms of slavery.”
What do you think after reading Toni Morrison’s beloved quotes?
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