Quotes By Alice Walker

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.

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

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

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

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.

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

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 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.'

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

America is not nearly done. We're only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows... what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants - if they survive that long - will see.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

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

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.

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

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.

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'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?

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.

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

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there's a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they're not the same, ever again.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

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