Toni Morrison Quotes

I will not be alone if I am my true self. Only by trading my true self for the companionship of another have I ever made myself alone. Because when I gave up my real self, I wound up resenting my "significant other" for "making me" do that-and it was this resentment that ate away at our relationship.

When you look back... on your love affairs... what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself.

In order to find yourself, who you really are, you got to be with yourself; you got to hang out with yourself.

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself.

Intimacy starts with a relationship with yourself, an understanding of who you are.

It's important not to lose who you are in a relationship just because it's nice to cuddle with somebody.

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

It's so much easier to know who you are when there aren't a thousand people telling you who they think you are.

If you can't be with yourself, you'll never learn to be with anyone else.

You can't get away from who you are I guess.

I'm still very much Kate.

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

Learn what you are and be such.

I did not find that writing a diary with a lead male character differed in any essential way from writing one with a female character. They all had the same challenges in terms of attempting to establish an identity, coping with loneliness, friendships, relationships.

I think if a character appeals to you, there are certain parts of yourself will come to the fore and other parts that will play down.

Working with the doctors is a fascinating two-way process. I am interested in what they suggest about why I'm the way I am. But if they could make me 'normal', I wouldn't want that. I've been like this for so long, it's what makes me .

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

My work is intensely personal.

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

I don't think we spend enough time in reflection and introspection. We don't know who we are as individuals in this culture anymore.

Get to know the real you, rather than try to look like or dress like those around you.