I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of exploring deeper themes and broader ideas rather than focusing solely on personal narratives.
Toni Morrison’s quote critiques the tendency to center personal experiences in storytelling when there are larger, more significant issues at play. She is urging writers and thinkers to transcend their own life stories in order to address broader societal themes and questions that resonate on a larger scale, promoting a narrative that seeks to make a impactful contribution beyond individual experiences.
In practice
During a writing workshop to encourage participants to think beyond their own experiences.
There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.
You looking good." "Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.
What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren't. Somebody tries to say, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' People say that to me. There's no language for it. Sorry doesn't do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.
An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself
One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to.
Those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are niche experiences - they are not. Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.
Anyone who understands Jazz knows that you can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their Hearts as well as their Eyes.
One thing is for sure-none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring.
The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.
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