Toni Morrison Quotes

My childhood ended in this horrible way. I lived in a country where I didn't trust anybody.

Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.

I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

I felt like a hunted animal, followed constantly, waiting to be killed.

I love driving, but sometimes, I'm not too good at it because I spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror if I know I'm being followed. You don't respond like, 'Oh, there's paparazzi.' It's more like, 'There's a man, and he's going to attack me.' That's how your body responds.

Victims always feel alone and helpless.

Death has always had a prominent place in my mind. There are times when I think somebody might kill me.

My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.

There's no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.

I was a high school senior and home alone one night with my younger brother. And a guy - gunman - kicked in our front door at our home in New Jersey and held the two of us captive. We escaped. He caught us again. We escaped again. So, a pretty horrific experience.

But when I came back into the city for the first time last November, I thought every truck, every building was going to blow up. It has truly changed me something fierce.

My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that was exactly what was happening all around us.

Dad never demonstrated any fear, although my sisters and I lived in terror he’d be killed by an assassin.

There's many, many people who have been through a lot worse things than I went through. I lost my dad when I was 14 and to violence.

I'd rather not have to come face to face with predators. I'd rather not be harassed. But no. Those weren't my choices to make, were they?

I was born and raised in war.

My mom got shot. My dad got shot. Some of the craziest stuff. All that happened to me.

It is so frustrating to feel in danger. People have followed me around at 2 in the morning and have literally said, 'Don't make me follow you. You're not responding to me.' It's incredibly degrading.

My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.

We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.

If you only knew what it did to me to have lived in that house where the police were bursting in to take everyone away! I certainly didn't have a happy and serene childhood.

I remember hearing myself start to whimper, a five-year-old, crouched by the side of the road, staring into my father's eyes, whimpering because it was so dark and there was no one coming to help, whimpering because my mother was back in the crushed car, not moving, and my father was lying here in the dirt, not answering me, not holding me, not comforting me, not helping my mother get out of the car, and there was blood, so much blood, and broken glass everywhere, and it was so dark and so cold and no one was coming to help.

And I've always been paranoid. I can remember as a baby my mother would spin the mobile above my head and thinking..."yeah, that's coming down."

I think I've always been paranoid.

My breathing slowed. I shaded her thick chestnut hair resting in a smooth curve against her face, a large bruise blazing across her cheek. I paused, looking over my shoulder to make certain I was alone. I drew her eye makeup, smudged by tears. In her watery eyes I drew the reflection of the commander, standing in front of her, his fist clenched. I continued to sketch, exhaled, and shook out my hands.