Beauty was not simply something to behold it was something one could do." Then you realized that it came from conviction, their own conviction." "You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly you looked closely and could not find the source. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us." All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. "The birdlike gestures are worn away to a mere picking and plucking her way between the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and beauty of the world-which is what she herself was. Our limitations were not known to us-not then." Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves. "We had defended ourselves since memory against everything and everybody, considered all speech a code to be broken by us, and all gestures subject to careful analysis we had become headstrong, devious, and arrogant. Concealed, veiled, eclipsed-peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask." "We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth." Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair.” We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. “It never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding. She had long ago given up the idea of running away to see new pictures, new faces, as Sammy had so often done." All of those pictures, all of those faces. So what was the point? They were everything. "Try as she might, she could never get her eyes to disappear. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time." Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. "Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good." Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. "Each pale yellow wrapper has a picture on it. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house." But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable." "If there is somebody with bluer eyes than mine, then maybe there is somebody with the bluest eyes. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye." The lover alone possesses his gift of love. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. "Love is never any better than the lover. They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly." "The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the cutbacks at the plant. "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs-all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured." "It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different." First, I share what I deem to be the best quotes from The Bluest Eye so that you can quickly and easily access the top ones. But, it's definitely worth reading, so long as you don't feel triggered by this content.īelow are 40 important The Bluest Eye quotes for you to read and analyze. The Bluest Eye is a very slow and difficult read with truly harrowing content about the nightmares Pecola is living through, and it explores themes of race, class, and gender with the type of thoughtful prose for which Morrison is known. She dreams of having blue eyes herself - a dream that comes from a very dark place in which Pecola truly yearns for a life very different from her own, filled with love and acceptance. In short, The Bluest Eye is about Pecola Breedlove, an 11-year-old Black girl fascinated with blond-haired, blue-eyed children. It's also one of Jenna Bush Hager's favorite books! The Bluest Eye is a national bestseller that was selected for both Oprah's book club and The Today Show's Read with Jenna book club. They are bound to make you think and analyze the most powerful words written by a Nobel Prize winner. Get the most important The Bluest Eye quotes by Toni Morrison in this post.
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