Alice Walker Quotes & Sayings

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you're just going to keep buying and selling things until there's nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet. — Alice Walker

The Lord don't like ugly, she say. And he ain't stuck on pretty. — Alice Walker

I don't know if I've ever cared much what others think. — Alice Walker

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

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

Standing beside the river, realizing that the water of earth is recycled forever, she deeply understood this: that there are two "presents." One is of the moment. The other is of a longer moment - the "moment" that includes the history and knowledge one knows. So that, she mused, if the tears shed by the mother of Isis are now part of this river then I am somehow connected to her in this longer "present" that I am able to envision and that contains both of us. — Alice Walker

I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time. — Alice Walker

Progress' affects few. Only revolution can affect many. — Alice Walker

Anyhow, he say, you know how it is. You ask yourself one question, it lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ask why you here, period. So what you think? I ask. 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, he say, the more I love. — Alice Walker

It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man. — Alice Walker

Happiness was just a trick in your case. — Alice Walker

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors. — Alice Walker

My heart must be young and fresh though, it feel like it blooming blood. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it. — Alice Walker

Sucking up to the biggies won't get us anywhere. — Alice Walker

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

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you're getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand. — Alice Walker

I don't know nothing, I think. And glad of it. — Alice Walker

She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it — Alice Walker

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn't exist except as a part of everything. — Alice Walker

There are thousands of Palestinians in prison virtually for no reason. — Alice Walker

Great Literature is help for humans. It is medicine of the highest order. In a more aware culture, writers would be considered priests. And, in fact, I have approached writing in a distinctly priestess frame of mind. I know what The Color Purple can mean to people, women and men, who have no voice. Who believe they have few choices in life. It can open to them, to their view, the full abundance of this amazing journey we are all on. It can lift them into a new realization of their own power, beauty, love, courage. It is a book that unites the present with the past, therefore giving people a sense of history and of timelessness they might never achieve otherwise. And even were it not 'great' literature, it has the best interests of all of us humans at heart. That we grow, change, challenge, encourage, love fiercely in the awareness that real love can never be incorrect. — Alice Walker

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don't do that, we really deserve the world we get. — Alice Walker

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

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that's fine. But even if you don't quote-unquote make it, you're fine if you've given it your whole heart and soul. — Alice Walker

Young womens no good these days, he say. Got they legs open to every Tom, Dick and Harry. — Alice Walker

First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man — Alice Walker

I never dreamed I would so enjoy having a father. It is like having another interesting mind, somewhat similar to your own but also strangely different, to rummage through. — Alice Walker

We're going to have to debunk the myth that Africa is a heaven for black people
especially black women. We've been the mule of the world there and the mule of the world here. — Alice Walker

I recognized myself in Jane Eyre. It amazes me how many white people can't read themselves in black characters. I didn't feel any separation between me and Jane. We were tight. — Alice Walker

The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom
Rebellious. Living.
Against the Elemental Crush.
A Song of Color
Blooming
For Deserving Eyes.
Blooming Gloriously
For its Self. — Alice Walker

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.
— Alice Walker

Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet. — Alice Walker

Can anything be more boring than an upper-class Englishman? — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

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

I can't fix my mouth to say how I feel. — Alice Walker

Then he say something that really surprise me cause it so thoughtful and common sense. When it come to what folks do together with they bodies, he say, anybody's guess is as good as mine. But when you talk about love I don't have to guess. I have love and I have been love. And I thank God he let me gain understanding enough to know love can't be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan. — Alice Walker

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

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print. — Alice Walker

I grew up in the South [USA states] under segregation. I know what terrorism feels like - when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn't look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. That's terrorism, too. — Alice Walker

Writers,' she mused. 'Does anybody else cause as much trouble, in the long run? But I can tell you what my father would say: Writers don't cause trouble so much as they describe it. Once it is described, trouble takes on a life visible to all, whereas until it is described, and made visible, only a few are able to see it. Still, there is something about writers ...' Nzingha laughed. 'As the Russians are finding out, they're damned hard people to re-educate. I think it is a kind of curlicue they have in the brain. They come into the world with a certain perspective, and the drive to share it. This curlicue is totally lacking in other people; I don't know why. — Alice Walker

Our mothers and grandmothers ... moving to music not yet written. — Alice Walker

Tashi's mother and father were just here. They are upset because she spends so much time with Olivia. She is changing, becoming quiet and too thoughtful, they say. She is becoming someone else; her face is beginning to show the spirit of one of her aunts who was sold to the trader because she no longer fit into village life. This aunt refused to marry the man chosen for her. Refused to bow to the chief. Did nothing but lay up, crack cola nuts between her teeth and giggle. — Alice Walker

The forest is the first cathedral. I felt that from the time I was a child. I credit my mother with that. I used to think it came from her Native-American side. Whichever it was, she instinctively connected with nature, and taught me that. — Alice Walker

Healing cannot be done by settling a score. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

- 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.- — Alice Walker

This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways. You ought to bash Mr. _ head open, she say. Think bout heaven later. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

The brilliance of enslaving the spirit is that it is an invisible prison from which the inmate appears to derive some comfort. — Alice Walker

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

the God of woman is autonomy — Alice Walker

I have fought and kicked and fasted and prayed and cursed and cried myself to the point of existing. — Alice Walker

My fantasy life. Without it I'm afraid to exist. — Alice Walker

For you will find, as women have found through the ages, that changing the world requires a lot of free time. Requires a lot of mobility. Requires money, and, as Virginia Woolf put it so well, "a room of one's own," preferably one with a key and a lock. Which means that women must be prepared to think for themselves, which means, undoubtedly, trouble with boyfriends, lovers, and husbands, which means all kinds of heartache and misery, and times when you will wonder if independence, freedom of thought, or your own work is worth it all. We must believe that it is. For the world is not good enough; we must make it better. — Alice Walker

Why should the killers of the world be "the future" and not us? — Alice Walker

When we
have changed
everything
we will eat
congratulations
with
our tea. — Alice Walker

We do it because we care. We care that Vincent Van Gogh mutilated his ear. We care that behind a pile of manure in the yard he destroyed his life. We care that Scott Joplin's music lives! We care because we know this: the life we save is our own. — Alice Walker

She look so stylish it like the trees all round the house draw themself up tall for a better look. — Alice Walker

On entering a place where animals are bred, my first thoughts are always about enslavement. Force. Captivity. — Alice Walker

I have a collective sense of suffering. — Alice Walker

If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows - pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music ... That would be so much cheaper than bombs. — Alice Walker

In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light. — Alice Walker

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

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? — Alice Walker

I feel peace with the world. — Alice Walker

Have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God. — Alice Walker

Do not
be
like
cows
grazing
watching
the
butcher. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

He recognized her immediately when he saw her again. And what he recognized was her energy, which seemed to precede her. As if her spirit were thrusting itself forward, into the unknown; dazzled, charmed, challenged, hopeful, happy to be energized by the mysterious, loving the adrenaline rush of surprise. — Alice Walker

It had never occurred to me, though when you read the bible it is perfectly plain if you pay attention only to the words. It is the pictures in the bible that fool you. The pictures that illustrate the words. All of the people are white and so you just think all the people from the bible were white too. But really white white people lived somewhere else during those times. That's why the bible says that Jesus Christ had hair like lamb's wool. Lamb's wool is not straight, Celie. It isn't even curly. — Alice Walker

We should not look down on our first ancestors. — Alice Walker

Did I mention my first sight of the African coast? Something struck in me, in my soul, Celie, like a large bell, and I just vibrated. Corrine and Samuel felt the same. And we kneeled down right on deck and gave thanks to God for letting us see the land for which our mothers and fathers cried
and lived and died
to see again. — Alice Walker

HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way ... I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to ... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful ... We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose. — Alice Walker

Sometimes I feel mad at her. Feel like I could scratch her hair right off her head. But then I think, Shug got a right to live too. She got a right to look over the world in whatever company she choose. Just cause I love her don't take none of her rights. — Alice Walker

She look like she ain't long for this world but dressed well for the next. — Alice Walker

There's something in all of us that wants a medal for what we have done. That wants to be appreciated. — Alice Walker

No song or poem will bear my mother's name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother's stories. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

Drew Dellinger is a deep and courageous poet. How lucky we are! — Alice Walker

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world. — Alice Walker

Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself. — Alice Walker

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! — Alice Walker

Because
you rubbed
my shoulder
last night
a poem
traveled down
my arm. — Alice Walker

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness. — Alice Walker

Naw, I say. Mr , can tell you, I don't like it at all. What is it to like? He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I ain't there. He never know the difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep.
She start to laugh. Do his business, she say. Do his business. Why, Miss Celie. You make it sound like he going to the toilet on you.
That's what it feel like, I say.
She stop laughing. — Alice Walker

We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children, and, if necessary, bone by bone. — Alice Walker

You must run around like a crazy person or walk sedately honoring the dead. — Alice Walker

HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity. — Alice Walker

The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?' — Alice Walker

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader - or any person - in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. — Alice Walker

HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child. — Alice Walker

Love is big; love can hold anger, love can even hold hatred. It's about the intention of what you want it to do. — Alice Walker

Without money of one's own in a capitalist society, there is no such thing as independence. — Alice Walker

All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could. — Alice Walker