Famous Quotes from Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison quote #379 from Paradise

Let me tell you about love that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated You dont. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable and therefore capable of learning how to learn and therefore interesting to God who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives their cleaving wont mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.
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Toni Morrison famous quote #303

You think because he doesnt love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesnt want you anymore that he is right -- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Dont. Its a bad word belong. Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldnt be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain They circle all around it sometimes you cant even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what You go up top and what do you see His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through beacuse the clouds let him they dont wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high free with nothing to hide him or bind him. You cant own a human being. You cant lose what you dont own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you You really want somebody like that Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door You dont do you And neither does he. Youre turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away hand it to him then why should it mean any more to him He cant value you more than you value yourself.
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