Quotes By Alice Walker

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

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.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

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 think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

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.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that's something that we should think about.