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Beyoncé, Kerry Washington and more remember Toni Morrison

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Beyoncé at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards; Francis Specker/CBSBeyoncé is one of the latest stars to remember Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, who died Monday night at age 88 years old.

“If you surrender to the air, you could ride it,” Beyoncé posted on her website — the final words from Morrison’s novel, Song of Solomon — along with, “Rest in paradise.”

Actress Kerry Washington also paid tribute to the author with a quote from the 1977 novel: “You wanna fly, you got to give up the s*** that weighs you down.”

“I cannot imagine growing up in a world without her words,” Washington added. “I pray you rest in peace and in power. We will celebrate you with endless gratitude and love. Always.”

Oscar-winning Moonlight writer and director Barry Jenkins tweeted, “I just assumed Ms. Morrison would live forever.  “And in so many ways in so many hearts and minds and spirits, she will.”

Jenkins told the Los Angeles Times last November that he thought it was “crazy” only one of Morrison’s novels, 1998’s Beloved, was adapted into a Hollywood film.

And filmmaker Ava DuVernay tweeted, “Your life was our gift, Tony Morrison.”  The director also posted a quote from a speech Morrison gave at Portland State University in 1975, excerpts of which DuVernay transcribed five years ago. 

“If you look at the world as a brutal game, then you bump into the mystery of the tree-shaped scar,” DuVernay posted.  “There seems to be such a thing as grace, such a thing as beauty, such a thing as harmony. All of which are wholly free and available to us.”

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