Walter Mosley Quotes

Poetry teaches us music, metaphor, condensation and specificity.

My hero in comic books is Jack Kirby: 'Spider-Man,' 'Fantastic Four,' 'Captain America,' Marvel Comics. He was really the basis for Marvel Comics.

A peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

Every day that we wake up is a good day. Every breath that we take is filled with hope for a better day. Every word that we speak is a chance to change what is bad into something good.

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.

Losing my parents really set me adrift in more ways than one. It's not just losing them. It's losing the possibility of family.

I took up writing to escape the drudgery of that every day cubicle kind of war.

The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning.

Our collective freedom... depends on our ability to defend the rights of others.

The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.

Black men of our day were never told, The sky's the limit. ... We could aspire to Joe Louis but never Henry Ford.

We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.

Writing is almost a place of dreams for me, and I don't have to give up anything to do it.

I think of writers as explorers, not necessarily as detectives. So there is certainly detecting that is going on - they're explorers.

I'm writing, I'm using language, I'm using that language to tell stories and even more so to get ideas across. And I just love that, and I've always loved that.

I believe that a writer has to tell what they think is the truth in a human experience. The truth of the human experience cannot escape the political.

There's a resistance for people to talk about things that make them feel guilty. When natural disasters happen, it's easier not to feel guilty about it.

There are as many kinds of love as there are flowers and bugs put together but men and women and their needs are all the same.

The older you get the more you live in the past

We born dyin'...But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah.

The fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can't do it, you can't run because the fear is an anchor in your chest.

At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.

I like to read either in motion or in water... I am happiest reading in the bathtub.

I'm almost completely without family and it's a very odd feeling in life. I have no children.

HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall'.

Purely the idea of writing a lot of books doesn't make you a great writer, but it might be that the process of doing a lot of writing will make you a much better writer.

I laugh, that there's a certain kind of cyclical nature to life and that I don't have to worry because whatever isn't there right now, it's coming back again.

My father cared about the world he lived in, and so he admitted his confusion about his place in America because he didn't want me to make the same mistake in my life.

I have never thought that I have sacrificed anything being a writer. That might not be true, maybe I have sacrificed something. Maybe I've given something up, but I can't think of it.

The idea of being productive, the idea of producing many books is going to lead you toward you becoming a better and better writer.

Mouse was the truest friend I ever had. And if there is such a thing as true evil, he was that too.

My job is writing for people to enjoy and then writing about a broader and a deeper world.

All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature.

I think that computer programming shows in my writing. Often when I write about computer programmers I'll write about the way that they see the world and they structure the world.

Your book grows. The early part of your book is growing still while you are writing the later part of your book.

Comic books were telling me what life was about. This was how I kind of entered life, through fiction.

The police and I have a deal. I don't talk to them and they don't listen to me.

Chirren [children] is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two.

Better to listen to the gospel than to a mortal leader.

Rest easy and go with the faith you lived with

Lawyer even sounds like liar.

Love makes you blind to your own survival. And if it doesn't then it's not love at all.

I'm just a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world.

I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning...

I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.” – Associated Press interview, 12-7-11

Chirren is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two.

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him.