Alice Walker Quotes

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Expecting anything, living frugally in surprise.

It must become a right of every person to die of old age. And if we secure this right for ourselves, we can, coincidentally, assure it for the planet.

Curiosity is my natural state and has led me headlong into every worthwhile experience (never mind the others) I have ever had.

People will say to you, "Oh, you are fearless." That is so not true. We should stop saying that about people. It's a slander, really.

Listen, God loves everything you love, and a mess of stuff you don't.

My great-great-great-grandmother walked as a slave from Virginia to Eatonton, Georgia... It is in memory of this walk that I chose to keep and to embrace my "maiden" name, Walker.

I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that's my religion.

Abortion is an act of self-defense.

I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

The world is changing. It is no longer a world just for boys and men

Only dead people need loud music, you know.

Aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat.

This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways.

I don't know nothing, I think. And glad of it.

Just because I don't harass it like some peoples us know don't mean I ain't got religion.

I know what I'm thinking bout, I think. Nothing. And as much of it as I can.

I feel I am a child that's lost its mother. I feel like a calf whose mother has gone off to slaughter.

That is scary, when you consider what we're doing to children all over the planet. They're the ones who are truly being terrorized by all the madness adults are perpetrating.

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

Whoever you are, whatever you are, start with that, whether salt of the earth or only white sugar.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence - as it saves most writers who live in 'interesting' oppressive times and are not afflicted by personal immunity.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

If a person is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.

I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

I feel that the ancestors are that covering that will cover me. I feel like I can only be enveloped in them spiritually and physically.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.

Even now, I find that no matter what has happened, I still have that trust. I have a lot of trust, that people can be better than they are.

If she come, I be happy. If she don't, I be content.

We have elders who [are] misguided and wallowing around in troughs of money with the wrong sort. They're not really good elders for the youth to emulate. The youth rightly don't like them.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

As you know from school, it's when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you've done your best.

Meditation is like the cloak of the good thief. You find a corner or somewhere where you can actually entertain your own self and your own soul, and understand what your work [is] here.

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things. Saki Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

I realized I was a country person - I'm just not used to small spaces.

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am 'known for' is what I am.

I could never live happily in Africa-or anywhere else-until I could live freely in Mississippi.

We alone can devalue gold by not caring if it falls or rises in the marketplace. Wherever there is gold there is a chain, you know, and if your chain is gold so much the worse for you.

Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

In our particular society, it is the narrowed and narrowing view of life that often wins.

In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light.

I feel like to be where you need to be - where you know you need to be - is such a high. What could be better?

My life is not to be somebody else's impact - you know what I mean?

It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period

The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

Love is big; love can hold anger, love can even hold hatred. It's about the intention of what you want it to do.

Being happy is not the only happiness.

A burnt finger remember the fire.