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**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

This inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison's 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* \--to tell a story of self-actualization. It aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison's literary vision.

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 mind and moral authority.