Alice Walker Quotes
Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.
before I embark on any new venture, I ask myself: will the joy of doing this make me lose track of any concern for time? If the answer is yes, I proceed!
You seem so clear about who you are. So certain that you are just right as you are, that for all your intelligence and maybe in spite of it, you never seem to need a second opinion.
To know is to exist; to exist is to be involved, to move about, to see the world with my own eyes.
In my opinion and experience, imperialists of all nations and races will tell us anything to keep us fighting. For them.
It has been proved that the land can exist without the country - and be better for it; it has not been proved ... that the country can exist without the land.
Some people don't understand that it is the nature of the eye to have seen forever, and the nature of the mind to recall anything that was ever known.
For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.
I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader - or any person - in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.
I am not convinced that men and women were ever meant to share the same house, though some people can do it beautifully.
Artists are messengers whose responsibility is to unite the world -- a faith that will lead not to destruction but to transformation.
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.
In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.
There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace.
human animals and nonhuman animals can communicate quite well; if we are brought up around animals as children we take this for granted. By the time we are adults we no longer remember.
We're going to have to debunk the myth that Africa is a heaven for black people -- especially black women. We've been the mule of the world there and the mule of the world here.
I think if I could not get myself off my cushion, off my couch, or away from whatever I'm eating - or drinking or partying or whatever - if I couldn't get away from that, I would have a heavy heart.
No song or poem will bear my mother's name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother's stories.
Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.
Odinary people don't have a feeling of being loved by the people who manage to get into positions of leadership. They get in there, they make a lot of money, and then they play games with us.
Honestly, that is the most important thing to me: Can I continue to live up to my own expectations of myself - and not fall back into slacking?
It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand and lie about who you actually are.
How anyone cannot see that Nature is God is amazing to me: that they'd rather worship something that can only exist, really, in their own minds.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me, along with the growth of vegetation from the earth and of hair from the head, is the growth of understanding.
People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don't.
Love likes to extend itself. If you receive it in a book - or however you get it - then your duty is to extend it beyond.
You don't need organized religion to connect with the universe. Often a church is the only place you can go to find peace and quiet... But it shouldn't be confused with connecting with one's spirit.
It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.
My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that.
No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people.
You a low down dog is what’s wrong. It’s time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.
I don't focus on criticism. I prefer to praise people and the world, rather than criticize them and it.
It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand there and lie about who you actually are. That's the trap.
But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain
