Top 534 Quotes & Sayings by Alice Walker - Page 6

The artist...is the voice of the people.

She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show.

Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.

How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, and hopefully embraced upon arrival, impacts the whole of our time on earth.

I had assumed that the Earth, the spirit of the Earth, noticed exceptions-those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the Earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.

What I've seen from keeping in touch as well as I can is that what I find so typical in Mexican culture is the helpfulness of the people to each other. I think, at this point, that is the highest good and the highest we can hope for - which is to be of help and use to each other wherever we are.

Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.

You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas? [...] He laughed. That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can't quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.

To grow, to become spiritually alive, and vibrant, you really have to struggle. Without struggle, you do not move at all...I would appreciate it if readers who come to my work would try very, very, very hard not to think narrowly as we are taught to think in America.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

The long-term accommodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is ... forgetfulness.

You die - and this is why manmade religions don't work for so many of us. The notion that you're dead and that's the end, and they even try to contain you in coffins. They make them out of steel and stuff. But really, your journey - for all you know - is just beginning. For all I know, what you see now is just a tiny little seed. So, I may blossom into an entire - I don't know - something in the sky. Who knows where we're going?

What I am really interested in is that I want people to be thinking in other ways - to stop thinking they have to remain glued to a system that has failed and to ideas about society that's necessarily about being run by Democrats or Republicans.

Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there.

The protection of evil must be the most self-destructive job.

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!

Activism is my rent for living on the planet.

I think mothers and daughters are meant to give birth to each other, over and over; that is why our challenges to each other are so fierce; that is why, when love and trust have not been too badly blemished or destroyed, the teaching and learning one from the other is so indelible and bittersweet. We daughters must risk losing the only love we instinctively feel we can't live without in order to be who we are, and I am convinced this sends a message to our mothers to break their own chains, though they may be anchored in prehistory and attached to their own great grandmothers' hearts.

I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers.

As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out.

People are called 'stars' not only because they shine... because the qualities they exemplify are... eternal. We are attracted to their sparkle, their warmth, their light, but they will be forever distant from us. So distant we can never quite believe our inseparability. Never quite believe that we are also composed of the light they have.

God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. ... Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It.

My activism really is for myself, because I see places in the world where I feel I should be. If there is something really bad, really evil, happening somewhere, then that is where I should be. I need, for myself, to feel that I have stood there. It feels a lot better than just watching it on television.

it is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.

I think that indigenous women's wisdom is crucial. So much of the care of the Earth has come from the mothers. I think it's imperative we turn to their wisdom in how to take care of the planet.

The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.

I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It.

Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.

You can't truly have an open heart until it's been broken.

War is a dead end, literally. And, what is more, we simply can't afford it. Not morally, and not financially. How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone.

We will be ourselves and free, or die in the attempt. Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing.

Everything is already perfect. And if you can accept that everything is already perfect, the imperfection is a part of the perfection. What's to worry about?

It's essential that we understand that taking care of the planet will be done as we take care of ourselves. You know that you can't really make much of a difference in things until you change yourself.

Laughter isn't even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out. Truly the suffering is great, here on earth. We blunder along, shredded by our mistakes, bludgeoned by our faults. Not having a clue where the dark path leads us. But on the whole, we stumble along bravely, don't you think?

Now there are heavy houses everywhere and more of them are being built. In fact, it is only when more houses are being constructed that some countries consider their economics healthy. Yet each house is a heavy footprint on the Earth. Just as all our possessions represent-if we cannot learn ways of sharing them-a weight and clutter that often means the faces of future generations will look up into darkness and the pressure on the Earth of "things."

You know a little drink now and then never hurt nobody, but when you can't git started without asking the bottle, you in trouble.

I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be eaten, and who never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It's like...you're just eating misery. You're eating a bitter life.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it. You did it just the way you had to do it, and that is what makes us us.

Poetry, I have discovered, is always unexpected and always as faithful and honest as dreams.

I really think admiration for nature can save us. I mean true admiration, to the point of not letting it be harmed.

As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.

Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm. Watch the people succumb To madness With ample cheer; Let them look askance at you And you askance reply. Be an outcast; Be pleased to walk alone (Uncool) Or line the crowded River beds With other impetuous Fools. Make a merry gathering On the bank Where thousands perished For brave hurt words They said. Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Qualified to live Among your dead.

As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can.

During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebration. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that.

If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

The only way to solace anyone who loved you in life is to be a good memory

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

Always with me was the inner twin: my true nature, my true self. It is timeless, free, compassionate and in love with whatever is natural to me

We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone.

I can spend two hours grubbing about in my garden, dazed with pleasure and intent, and it feels like five minutes.

HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass.

I'm very disappointed in Barack 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. I cannot support his caving in to Benjamin Netanyahu. I think many black people support him because they're so happy to have handsome black man in the White House. But it doesn't make me happy if that handsome black man in the White House is betraying all of our traditional values of peace, peoplehood, caring about strangers, feeding the hungry, and not bombing children.

(a womanist) 3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.

So the best thing is to really work on yourself and opening your own heart and just letting all that stuff [worrying] go. And it is possible. It's sometimes takes a lot of time; it's not easy. And a lot of sitting with yourself and trying to work with your own heart.

Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored

Many people are aware that we are in peril and that there is no trustworthy leadership.

The Animals of the planet are in desperate peril and they are fully aware of this. No less than human beings are doing in all parts of the world, they are seeking sanctuary.

Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet.