Toni Morrison citáty
Toni Morrison
Datum narození: 18. únor 1931
Datum úmrtí: 5. srpen 2019
Toni Morrisonová, vlastním jménem Chloe Anthony Wofford [nenalezeno v uvedeném zdroji] byla americká spisovatelka, redaktorka a profesorka. V roce 1993 obdržela Nobelovu ceny za literaturu. Její knihy jsou známy díky užívání epických témat, živých dialogů a propracovaných charakteristik postav afroamerického původu. Mezi její nejznámější knihy patří Velmi modré oči, Píseň o Šalamounovi nebo Milovaná, za kterou získala v roce 1988 Pulitzerovu cenu. Americkým časopisem s názvem Ladies' Home Journal byla vybrána mezi třicet nejmocnějších žen v Americe.
Citáty Toni Morrison
„Pokud víte o knize, kterou byste si rádi přečetli, ale ještě ji nikdo nenapsal, musíte ji napsat sami.“
Zdroj: [Schnakenberg, Robert, 2010, Tajné životy slavných spisovatelů, Knižní klub, 1, 270, 978-80-242-2598-2]
„Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?“
— Toni Morrison, kniha Song of Solomon
Zdroj: Song of Solomon
„Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.“
— Toni Morrison, kniha Beloved
Zdroj: Beloved (1987)
Kontext: Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. <!-- ~ Ch. 9
„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. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.“
— Toni Morrison, kniha Tar Baby
Tar Baby (1981)
„Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.“
— Toni Morrison, kniha Sula
Zdroj: Sula (1973)
„Tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.“
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Kontext: Tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience. The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek — it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language — all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
„Anger… it's a paralyzing emotion… you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless… it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers — and I need clarity, in order to write — and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever.“
Interview with Don Swaim (1987) http://wiredforbooks.org/tonimorrison/
Kontext: Anger... it's a paralyzing emotion... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers — and I need clarity, in order to write — and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever. I can feel melancholy, and I can feel full of regret, but anger is something that is useful to the people who watch it... it's not useful to me.
„There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination.“
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Kontext: There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.
