Walter Dean Myers Quotes

The idea of voluntary segregation went against every value I had been taught. What did being born black have to do with excellence?

You cannot live this life anymore without the ability to read.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

Drew, your enemies can mess your life up,' he said. 'Or they can make it easy for you to do it to yourself.' —Fletch

The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.

Violence was just as much about WHAT was happening as it was how it happened.

There is a crisis involving reading in certain communities.

How deep is your game?

Each of us is born with a history already in place

My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read.

Tests were always easy for me. I saw them as games, saw myself as being in a contest against a mythical adversary, and welcomed the challenge.

My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic.

Nothing sounds better than being away from this mess. Nothing sounds better right now than getting higher than the hole I'm in.

...when we feel powerless, we stop trying to find a better way.

When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy... you can bet he's worried either about his story or his ability to tell it.

I mean, if you think about doing things to people like that, if you think about it too much, it gets all up in you and you can't control it after a while. Then they really got you.

Let me thinkThinking is all I haveIf wisdom is a pretenseThen let me pretend to be wise

Go. Think. Turn black into white.Night into day. I am tired of thinking.I know where it will lead me and I don’tWant to be there.Go love. Do your thinking.

Fools commit suicide and think they're doing themselves a favor.

All of fiction is truthful. What you create is your own truth and no one can take that away or change it.

Books have always been among my most trusted of friends, Mr. Linden replied. The best of them allow the mind to wander wherever the author's musings lead.