“This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.”

American novelist and editor

Toni Morrison was an American novelist and editor. She is known for novels that helped define late 20th century American literature, and she received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, appeared in 1970. Song of Solomon, published in 1977, brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She later won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in 1988. Other works include Sula and the short story Recitatif.