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Language can never "pin down" slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.

— Toni Morrison Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)

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More quotes by Toni Morrison

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose—not to need permission for desire—well now, that was freedom.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Toni Morrison (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.