Top 534 Quotes & Sayings by Alice Walker - Page 3

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don't accept it, it's their loss.

When I was 18, I went to the Soviet Union. I kept hearing that America was planning to bomb them - lots of bombs were going to come down on these people. I went there not knowing anything, except that I thought the whole thing was stupid and that I wanted to see who these people were that we were going to bomb.

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

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I'm a writer.

One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you're 52.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.

I start each book when it's ready and never before.

I'm the most stubborn person I know.

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.

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.

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

I'm very disappointed in Obama. I was very much in support of him in the beginning, but I cannot support war. I cannot support droning. I cannot support capitulating to the banks.

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.

I don't feel I've had a decent critic ever on the East coast.

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.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

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.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

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.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

I just feel that 'The Color Purple,' which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.

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

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.'

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.

I don't have this feeling that 70 is really old.

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.

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 think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly.

I'm entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they're thinking and who they are and who's hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what's the story, really?

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.

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.

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.

The dropping of bombs on people - isn't that terrorism?

Fear is real, but so is love.

Once you feel loved by the universe, you're already accepted, and you're not really concerned about offending people.

From infancy, I have relied on the fiercely sweet spirits of black men; and this is abundantly clear in my work.

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.

On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.

I'm sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.

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.

I'm tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro - that's the Scotch-Irish part.

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

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

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it's almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.