Toni Morrison Quotes

You could think of an ecosystem as a bunch of antagonistic arms races, almost: Everything that an animal depends upon for food is the body part of some other animal or plant who would just as soon keep that body part for itself.

The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.

Journalism is a Darwinian process.

Take, for example, the African jungle, the home of the cheetah. On whom does the cheetah prey? The old, the sick, the wounded, the weak, the very young, but never the strong. Lesson: If you would not be prey, you had better be strong.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

The fast fish, not the big fish, eats the small fish.

When a lion doesn't get its prey, it remains hungry. When the prey saves himself, he has not won, but has saved his life.

Big fish eat little fish.

People are violent by nature. That’s why we rule the earth; we beat the crap out of everyone else.

When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today.

That's the food chain that cricket is sometimes. You have to be at the top of it otherwise you get swept away and eaten up.

Whether the bear beats the wolf or the wolf beats the bear, the rabbit always loses.

Life eats life to live.

Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.

Weak dogs become bones for other, stronger dogs.

Frogs eat Butterflies, Snakes eat Frogs, Hogs eat Snakes, Men eat Hogs.

Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war.... The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land.

In the vast game of Darwinian musical chairs, whenever the music stopped there were large numbers of people without a seat—and some smartass had sold them guns.

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.

Nature, red in tooth and claw.

Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.

The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.