Toni Morrison Quotes

Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality.

This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.

A man doesn't wasnt to feel that a woman cares more for him than he cares for her. He doesn't want to feel owned, body and soul. It's that damned possessive attitude. This man is mine---he belongs to me! He wants to get away --- to get free. He wants to own his woman; he doesn't want her to own him.(Simon Boyle)

She doesn’t want me to own her. (Dante) Well, the Simi doesn’t understand that. Owning’s not so bad. I own akri and he kind of fun. (Simi)

It's strange, isn't it, how the idea of belonging to someone can sound so great? It can be comforting, the way it makes things decided. We like the thought of being held, until it's too tight. We like that certainty, until it means there's no way out. And we like being his, until we realize we're not ours anymore.

It all depends on whether you have things, or they have you.

We use the same possessive pronouns for everything, but do we own our lives or sisters or husbands in the same way we own our shoes? Do we own any of them at all?

No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.

I hate jealousy, I hate possessiveness. I'm nobody's possession.

'Have You in My Wilderness,' the title track, is about the idea of possessing a person, or saying, 'You're mine; you're in my world now.' I was drawn to that as an idea less from my own experience than from listening to music written by men that was kind of male gaze-y.

They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them.

...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go." From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102.

Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” No. “No?” No. I loved being yours. But now I’m mine, which is all I ever was, in the end.

She believes that Tobias belongs to her now. She doesn't know the truth, that he belongs to himself.

No human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving, is ever in our possession.

No human being can ever "own" another, whether in friendship, love, marriage or parenthood. Many human relationships have been ruined and happiness far too often changed to misery by a failure to understand this.

True love can exist only in freedom from possession.

No human being can ever 'own' another, whether in friendship, love, marriage, or parenthood.

This man belongs to me, I want him!

You don’t share me. You own me.

Love and exclusive possession can never go together.

Possession means to sit astride the world Instead of having it astride of you.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.

I know I don't own Big Bird, but I own his soul, I feel.

I don't want to be owned by anyone.