Alice Walker Quotes
I think America has always been polarized... It's a racist country and it has always been.
I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it's almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.
My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father's head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.
What gardening teaches us is that if you plant things, they'll come up. But you have to be willing to wait for them to bear fruit because things are seasonal.
Abortion, for many women, is more than an experience of suffering beyond anything most men will ever know, it is an act of mercy, and an act of self-defense.
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.
I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.
I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.
Always with me was the inner twin: my true nature, my true self. It is timeless, free, compassionate and in love with whatever is natural to me
Politically, the world is so confused right now - there's so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.
I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.
Whenever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared. I have been helped, supported, encouraged and nurtured by people of all races, creeds, colors and dreams.
I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.
We will be ourselves and free, or die in the attempt. Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing.
Dear God...I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.
it is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.
She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it.
How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, and hopefully embraced upon arrival, impacts the whole of our time on earth.
Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.
Poetry, I have discovered, is always unexpected and always as faithful and honest as dreams.
I can spend two hours grubbing about in my garden, dazed with pleasure and intent, and it feels like five minutes.
Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.
How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.
I'm where I need to be, so my heart is light. Whatever happens, I know - I mean, I feel - that this is absolutely where I should be and I've lived up to my own expectations.
As an elder of the Americas and of the rest of the planet, it is my responsibility to care for and protect, to the best of my ability, the young.
To me war is something to be outgrown, recognized as immature, wasteful, and so destructive to life that human beings should shun it ... as they once shunned bubonic plague.
Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm.
I think that indigenous women's wisdom is crucial. So much of the care of the Earth has come from the mothers. I think it's imperative we turn to their wisdom in how to take care of the planet.
For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.
My ancestors make up the skin of the world. That's who that is. That's what that is. That's us.
I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.
My writing is very organic. It's what I am. My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. So I think of it as something that's very essential to my being.
In every life there comes a point when you have to make a decision about how you will live.
Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you're just going to keep buying and selling things until there's nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.
