Quote by Toni Morrison: “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must write it.”

Don't wait for someone else to make the art, tell the story, or build the thing you are looking for. If the gap exists, you are probably the person meant to fill it. Your desire for something is already evidence that you can create it.

Morrison made this remark in a 1981 interview with the Ohio Arts Council, describing her motivation for writing. She had begun writing fiction specifically because she wanted to read stories about Black life that did not exist yet, and her career became a sustained act of filling that absence.

American novelist, editor, and professor who was the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1993. Her novels, including Beloved and Song of Solomon, explore the legacies of slavery and Black identity in America with extraordinary depth.