"We all know nations that can be identified by the flight of writers from their shores. These are regimes whose fear of unmonitored writing is justified because truth is trouble. It is trouble for the warmonger, the torturer, the corporate thief, the political hack, the corrupt justice system, and for a comatose public. Unpersecuted, unjailed, unharrassed writers are trouble for the ignorant bully, the sly racist, and the predators feeding off the world’s resources. The alarm, the disquiet, writers raise is instructive because it is open and vulnerable, because if unpoliced it is threatening. Therefore the historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties that will follow."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesChildren's authorsEditors from the United StatesPlaywrights from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Burn This Book, p. 2 (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Toni Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor, who received a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
162 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Toni Morrison →
Related Quotes
"Reviewers tend to have trouble with a writer like Toni Morrison, getting a handle on her, because she is doing someth…"
"Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty."
"There is really nothing more to say — except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."
"Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is al…"
"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It …"
"Was there anything so loathsome as a wilfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and …"
"Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been …"
"Black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black…"
"Beginning Beloved with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity se…"
"The couple upstairs, united, didn't hear a sound, but below them, outside, all around 124 the snow went on and on and…"