Toni Morrison wrote 11 novels during her lifetime and received a number of prestigious honors and accolades for her body of work, including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Nobel Prize for literature. Centering her novels on the lived experiences of Black Americans, Morrison highlighted the realities of her characters’ lives through intimate explorations of identity, race, gender, and economic class. This compelling quote comes from Morrison’s preface in “The Black Book,” an encyclopedic exploration of the Black experience in America, edited by Morrison and published in 1974. Her words here are a profound reminder that we are each a compilation of everything we have ever known and loved, connected to our ancestors and our descendants by our experiences and memories.

This line comes from abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ 1845 memoir “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” where he expands on the idea by saying he would rather face ridicule than be “false” and suffer his own self-disgust. His words encourage us to choose honesty even when it’s uncomfortable — to speak up, stand firm in our values, and resist the temptation to blend in just to keep the peace. Douglass reminds us that staying true to ourselves is not only the braver choice, but it’s also far kinder to the person we have to live with every day: ourselves.