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Our first recipient's name is synonymous with the gravitas. Toni Morrison's words and characters
have enriched the annals of American literature and the lives of millions of readers for more
than 40 years. Her characters in particular, the female ones, are pitch perfect and utterly
tranceful. Her expansive stories shine a brilliant light on being black in America. She has an
unclenching eye for intimate detail that her works are both something to behold in awe,
and something to identify with and own. She is our very own beloved Toni Morrison. Please
join me in welcoming the first AfricanAmerican woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
Mrs. Toni Morrison. Thank you. Thank you. I am really pleased to receive this recognition
of Mrs. Sackler. Sandra and I am doubly delighted to be among this group of firsts. We will
not be known forever as the "firsties". Knowing perfectly well that there will always never
ever be something of us, of our group who is last. But I'm here because I am an artist.
And, it's wonderful to be in this extraordinarily beautiful museum. I was here once back in
the dark ages. It was nothing like this. This is beautiful. I have to say that, any organization,
institution, group, that does not regard art work as finger painting and a children's recess.
Think of the work that artists do as filling in time for people who are deeply disturbed,
or lonely, or just unemployed. That organization is superior and rare. If you read the biographies
of some of the best artists in the world you might burst into tears. Because, we have learned
or been taught to value the pain, the misery, the poverty, the lunacy that may surround
the art but does not really conform it. The fact is that human life has never been without
artwork. Whether it's body painting, or whether it's [inaudible 16:46] , or whether it's dance
in tribes or ballet, from Shot to Mozart's operas, there are cave paintings, Aborigine's
sand paintings, Cathedrals, folk tales, Tolstoy. The range covers the beginning of sensible
life of the human race and continues. We have never been without it. We still hunger for
ways to show who we are, and to say what we mean. I remember being very deeply saddened
a while back by some political outrage, an event leading to a consequence that was not
so anger making as soiling. It seemed confirmation that this country had given up on itself and
was content to let the patients run the asylum. Maybe that was not a bad idea since perhaps
the patients know the ins and outs of the asylum better than the doctors do. In any
case, for some reason that I still can't explain, this particular calamity hurt me where I never
had been wounded before, in my imagination. I found myself unable to write. A friend called
me during that time and I mentioned to him the impasse that I was facing. He shouted
on the phone, "No, no, no, no, you must not be stuck because this is precisely the time
when artists go to work." He reminded me that the good times, the sweet times, were not
only not essential for art, they might be inimical. Art composed, wrote, painted in
jails, in camps underground, when their nations were occupied by the enemy, they worked. Rather
beautifully chastened, I thanked him profusely. I have to say, I have never had a problem
creating since. I salute and congratulate all of you here tonight, and especially my
group and my colleagues of "firsties", your commitment and your passion and your willingness
to let nothing dissuade you and your willingness to take control of the asylum. Thank you.