‘Every renaissance comes to the world with a cry, the cry of human spirit to be free’ Anne Sullivan

‘There is really nothing more to say – except why. But since why is difficult to handle one must take refuge in how’ (1969, The Bluest Eyes, Toni Morrison)

‘If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on to the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression’ Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison on censorship “The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists’ questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, cancelled films—that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink” (2009).

‘I’m interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great deal more about contemporary life’ Toni Morrison