The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom

At once the ideal introduction to Toni Morrison and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith.

"She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller." --Oprah Winfrey

Through bricolage--a construction or creation from a diverse range of available things--this brief book aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison's literary vision and achievement. It dramatizes the life of her powerful mind by juxtaposing quotations, one to a page, drawn from her entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction--from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard.

Its compelling sequence of flashes of revelation--stunning for their linguistic originality, keenness of psychological observation, and philosophical profundity--addresses issues of abiding interest in Morrison's work: the reach of language for the ineffable; transcendence through imagination; the self and its discontents; the vicissitudes of love; the whirligig of memory; the singular power of women; the original American sin of slavery; the bankruptcy of racial oppression; the complex humanity and art of black people. The Measure of Our Lives brims with elegance of style and authority.