It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of autonomy in love, suggesting that one cannot possess another person.
Toni Morrison's quote challenges the notion of ownership in relationships, particularly in love. It suggests that the word 'belong' implies possession, which is inherently problematic because it diminishes individual freedom and humanity. In love, rather than viewing a partner as someone to own, it is essential to recognize and respect their autonomy and individuality.
In practice
This quote can be shared during discussions about healthy relationships.
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.
She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.
But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
One thing will always secure heaven for us-the acts of charity and kindness with which we have filled our lives. We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
A broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is in books. It's a good deal like a bad tooth, though you won't think THAT a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it.
Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so.
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