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A Mercy QUOTES

A Mercy QUOTES

1 " You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.

You shout the word—mind, mind, mind—over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

2 " You are my shaper and my world as well. It is done. No need to choose. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

3 " She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

4 " Their drift away from others produced a selfish privacy and they had lost the refuge and the consolation of a clan. Baptists, Presbyterians, tribe, army, family, some encircling outside thing was needed. Pride, she thought. Pride alone made them think that they needed only themselves, could shape life that way, like Adam and Eve, like gods from nowhere beholden to nothing except their own creations. She should have warned them, but her devotion cautioned against impertinence. As long as Sir was alive it was easy to veil the truth: that they were not a family-not even a like-minded group. They were orphans, each and all. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

5 " What excited and challenged her shipmates horrified the churched women and each set believed the other deeply, dangerously flawed. Although they had nothing in common with the views of each other, they had everything in common with one thing: the promise and threat of men.
Here, they agreed, was where security and risk lay. And both had come to terms. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

6 " Here I am not the one to throw out. No one steals my warmth and shoes because I am small. No one handles my backside. No one whinnies like sheep or goat because I drop in fear and weakness. No one screams at the sight of me. No one watches my body for how it is unseemly. With you my body is pleasure is safe is belonging. I can never not have you have me. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

7 " We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

8 " More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark? "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

9 " Shallow believers prefer a shallow God. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

10 " I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

11 " I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

12 " There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

13 " I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

14 " But then Job was a man. Invisibility was intolerable to men. What complaint would a female Job dare to put forth? And if, having done so, and He deigned to remind her of how weak and ignorant she was, where was the news in that? What shocked Job into humility and renewed fidelity was the message a female Job would have known and heard every minute of her life. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

15 " Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark - weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more - but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog's profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or when a corn-husk doll sitting on a shelf is soon splaying in the corner of a room and the wicked of how it got there is plain. Stranger things happen all the time everywhere. You know. I know you know. One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read? "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

16 " I dream a dream that dreams back at me "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

17 " To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

18 " florens would sigh then, her head on lina's shoulder and when sleep came the little girl's smiel lingered. mother hunger – to be one or have one – both of them were reeling from that longing which, lina knes, remained alive, traveling to the bone. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

19 " One chance, I thought. There is no protection but there is difference. You stood there in those shoes and the tall man laughed and said he would take me to close the debt. I knew Senhor would not allow it. I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight. I knelt before him. Hoping for a miracle. He said yes.
It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human. I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: to be given dominion over another is a hard thing, to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy

20 " He lay wracked with pain and in moral despair; they told him about themselves, and when he felt even worse, he got an answer from God saying, Who on earth do you think you are? Question me? Let me give you a hint of who I am and what I know. But a peek into Divine knowledge was less important than gaining, at last, the Lord's attention. Which...was all Job ever wanted. Not proof of His existence-- he never questioned that. Nor proof of His power- everyone accepted that. He simply wanted to catch His eye. To be recognized not as worthy or worthless, but to be noticed as a life-form by the One who made and unmade it. "

― Toni Morrison , A Mercy