Toni Morrison

"As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think."

"Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network."

"I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about."

"I get angry about things, then go on and work."

"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."

"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."

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