Alice Walker's Quotes & Sayings

We're asleep, said Suni. Just walking and talking, eating and shitting. Sound asleep.

And we have to be that way, of course, said Anne. It's the human equivalent of fallowness.

Spiritual hibernation, said Suni. — Alice Walker

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that's going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it. — Alice Walker

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 absence of models, in literature as in life, to say nothing of painting, is an occupational hazard for the artist, simply because models in art, in behavior, in growth of spirit and intellect
even if rejected
enrich and enlarge one's view of existence. Deadlier still, to the artist who lacks models, is the curse of ridicule, the bringing to bear on an artist's best work, especially his or her most original, most strikingly deviant, only a fund of ignorance and the presumption that as an artist's critic one's judgement is free of the restrictions imposed by prejudice, and is well informed, indeed, about all the art in the world that really matters. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

You don't need organized religion to connect with the universe. Often a church is the only place you can go to find peace and quiet ... But it shouldn't be confused with connecting with one's spirit. — Alice Walker

They were women then
My mama's generation
Husky of voice stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts
How they led
Armies
Headragged generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Ditches
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what we
MUST know
Without knowing a page
Of it
Themselves. — Alice Walker

Aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat. — Alice Walker

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. — 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

When you are active, and you must know this so well, that the more you are active, the more you see, the more you go to see. You know, you are curious. One thing leads to another thing, and it gets deeper and deeper, too. And there's no end to it. — Alice Walker

I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that's my religion. — Alice Walker

Do you know what O'Keefe Says about blue? he asked her, blowing out a cloud of smoke, warming to her voice, though he did not remember her face clearly from the opening night's exhibition.
What?
That it is the color that will remain after everything is destroyed. — Alice Walker

Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture. That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart. — Alice Walker

If you don't have the ability or encouragement to use yourself in a physical way, you could become just another talking head. And talking heads run things. That's part of the reason why we're in such a sad state as a planet, because it's all about thinking, and thinking has led to a lot of aggrandizement - taking over [resources] and figuring out how you can steal and leaving people and the planet in an impoverished state. — 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

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

You a low down dog is what's wrong. It's time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need. — Alice Walker

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? — Alice Walker

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

This was my first indication of the quality I feel is most characteristic of Zora's work: racial health; a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature. — 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

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. — Alice Walker

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman's normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors. — Alice Walker

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

It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand there and lie about who you actually are. That's the trap. — Alice Walker

There's an ecstatic side to writing. It's like jazz. It just has a life. — Alice Walker

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, 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. I mean, that's terrorism, too. — Alice Walker

Because whatever has happened to humanity, whatever is currently happening to humanity, it is happening to all of us. No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people. My illness proved that. As well as my understanding that Generose's lost daughter belongs to all of us. It is up to all of us to find her; it is up to us to do our best to make her whole again. There is only one daughter, one father, one mother, one son, one aunt or uncle, one dog, one cat, donkey, monkey, or goat in the universe, after all: the one right in front of you. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

She standing there looking me straight in the eye. She look tired and her jaws full of air.
I say it's cause I'm a fool, I say. I say it cause I'm jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can't.
What that? she say.
Fight. I say. — 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

Criticism is painful when it's not done with love. — Alice Walker

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

A big war is coming. Bigger than the one they were starting when I left. It'll go hard on England, but I expect we'll survive. I missed the other war, she said. I mean to be present for this one. Samuel and I had never really thought about war. Why, she said, the signs are all over Africa. India too, I expect. First there's a road built to where you keep your goods. Then your trees are hauled off to make ships and captain's furniture. Then your land is planted with something you can't eat. Then you're forced to work it. That's happening all over Africa, she said. Burma too, I expect. — 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

Perhaps this is simply the way it is with writers. It's when they don't see you that you matter. Because then you can belong to them in a way that permits them complete possession. You are determined by them. You are controlled. You are, generally speaking, exaggerated. — Alice Walker

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account. — Alice Walker

The Estate of Zora Neale Hurston would like to thank those people who have worked so hard over the years in introducing new generations of readers to the work of Zora Neale Hurston. We are indebted to Robert Hemenway, Alice Walker, and all the Modern Language Association folks who helped usher in Zora's rediscovery. — Zora Neale Hurston

And then, just when I know I can live content without Shug, just when Mr. _ done ast me to marry him again, this time in the spirit as well as in the flesh, and just after I say, Naw, I still don't like frogs, but let's us be friends, Shug write me she's coming home. Now. Is this life or not? *I be so calm.* If she come, I be happy. If she don't I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn. — Alice Walker

Shug say, What, too shamefaced to put singing and dancing and fucking together? She laugh. That's the reason they call what us sing the devil's music. Devils love to fuck. — 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

I'm not being disrespectful of the medium; it's just not as important as the work that I actually do [books]. — Alice Walker

My life is not to be somebody else's impact - you know what I mean? — 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. — Alice Walker

This is the true wine of astonishment: We are not over when we think we are. — Alice Walker

What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life, is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in one's glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity, a fearlessness of growth, of search, of looking, that enlarges the private and the public world. And yet, in our particular society, it is the narrowed and narrowing view of life that often wins — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

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

But what was good tween us must have been nothing but bodies, she say. Cause I don't know the Albert that don't dance, can't hardly laugh, never talk bout nothing, beat you and hid your sister Nettie's letters. Who he? — Alice Walker

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

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

A little love, a little buckshot, that's how I'd say handle yourself. — Alice Walker

The earth is for joy, and dancing is a big part of that. And you dance with nature. Nature is always dancing. If you're not harassing it and killing it and mutilating it, nature is dancing. That's what the leaves are doing when the wind blows through them. We live in a magical wonderful universe. And just spoil it while thinking we can at some point go to heaven or some other planet. — Alice Walker

The good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that's who She thinks we all are. — Alice Walker

I love the women's movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population. — Alice Walker

As I get older, I realize that the thing I value the most is good-heartednes s. — Alice Walker

The longer I am a writer
so long now that my writing finger is periodically numb
the better I understand what writing is; what its function is; what it is supposed to do. I learn that the writer's pen is a microphone held up to the mouths of ancestors and even stones of long ago. That once given permission by the writer
a fool, and so why should one fear?
horses, dogs, rivers, and, yes, chickens can step forward and expound on their lives. The magic of this is not so much in the power of the microphone as in the ability of the nonhuman object or animal to BE and the human animal to PERCEIVE ITS BEING. — Alice Walker

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. — Alice Walker

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom. — Alice Walker

I find it difficult to feel responsible for the suffering of others. That's why I find war so hard to bear. It's the same with animals: I feel the less harm I do, the lighter my heart. I love a light heart. And when I know I'm causing suffering, I feel the heaviness of it. It's a physical pain. So it's self-interest that I don't want to cause harm. — Alice Walker

A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world ... — Alice Walker

My writing is very organic. It's what I am. My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. So I think of it as something that's very essential to my being. — Alice Walker

It's not possible to stop love. — Alice Walker

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

It's very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can't imagine. — 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

Why you like this, huh? Why you always think you have to do things your own way? I ast your mama bout it one time, while you was in jail.
What she say? ast Sofia.
She say you think your way as good as anybody else's. Plus, it yours.
Sofia laugh. — Alice Walker

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

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it's a good place that we're all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it. — Alice Walker

HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator's magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing. — Alice Walker

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

Many readers fail to realize this, but 'The Color Purple' is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one's original God: the earth and nature. — Alice Walker

Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. 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. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I ask. Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ask. Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you cam feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found it. — Alice Walker

Judy Collins sings about in "The Blizzard," or read Alice Walker's essay "My Father's Country Is the Poor." Each — Gloria Steinem

Storytelling, you know, has a real function. The process of the storytelling is itself a healing process, partly because you have someone there who is taking the time to tell you a story that has great meaning to them. They're taking the time to do this because your life could use some help, but they don't want to come over and just give advice. They want to give it to you in a form that becomes inseparable from your whole self. That's what stories do. Stories differ from advice in that, once you get them, they become a fabric of your whole soul. That is why they heal you."

~Alice Walker, in an interview about her work in Common Boundary, 1990 — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

In a way, no matter who's in charge of the corporation that the United States is, the direction in which it is taken seems to be inexorable. So, you just get the job of being the front man for four or eight years. Now, most people realize that's what you are. — Alice Walker

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you've become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that's the height of intelligence. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

You don't always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that's plenty. — Alice Walker

America is America. It's a capitalist system. They [leaders] have enshrined that belief that profit matters more than anything else. The polarization of the society is just the resurfacing of that. — Alice Walker

I gave my archive to Emory University because there's a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he's the editor. — Alice Walker

I want a different system entirely. One not seen on this earth for thousands of years. If ever. Democratic Womanism. Notice how this word has "man" right in the middle of it? That's one reason I like it. He is right there, front and center. But he is surrounded. I want to vote and work for a way of life that honors the feminine. — 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

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

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. — Alice Walker

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. — Alice Walker

I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don't think it's intelligent, and it's not sane. So why would you want to support it? — 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

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

Why can't Tashi come to school? she asked me. When I told her the Olinka don't believe in educating girls she said, quick as a flash, They're like white people at home who don't want colored people to learn. Oh, she's sharp, Celie. At the end of the day, when Tashi can get away from all the chores her mother assigns her, she and Olivia secret themselves in my hut and everything Olivia has learned she shares with Tashi. To Olivia right now Tashi alone is Africa. The Africa she came beaming across the ocean hoping to find. Everything else is difficult for her. — Alice Walker

I think that's what Toni Morrison and Alice Walker understand, the secret language of women. That it's not a secret at all; men just don't know how to listen. — Marlon James