‘No other writer in my lifetime, or perhaps ever, has married so completely an understanding of the structures of power with knowledge of the human heart’

‘Toni Morrison is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known’

‘Morrison is, to me, the best writer the English-speaking world has ever seen’

‘Morrison’s legacy in commemorating slavery’s survivors will endure and uplift for centuries to come'

‘Her every word a caress, her every sentence an embrace, her every paragraph, a cupping of her hands around our faces that said: I know you, I see you, we are together’

‘I have never read anyone else like her . . . She was an opener of doors, doors that seemed they might always be shut, doors shut so tight they seemed not to be doors at all’

‘Her legacy is total excellence . . . she is magnificent, her emotional intelligence is second to none and her bravery was equal to her artistry’