Alice Walker Quotes
1. No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
2. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
3. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.
4. Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.
5. The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.
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.
HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.
HELPED are those who love others unsplit off from their faults; to them will be given clarity of vision.
HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize an partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.
HELPED are those who love the Earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy in her lively response to love, they will converse with the trees.
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.
HELPED are those who risk themselves for others’ sakes; to them will be given increasing opportunities for ever greater risks. Theirs will be a vision of the word in which no one’s gift is despised or lost.
HELPED are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or of war.
HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for peace; on them depends the future of the world.
HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgiveness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth.
HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator’s magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing.
HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous.
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.
HELPED are those who love the lesbian, the gay, and the straight, as they love the sun, the moon, and the stars. None of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.
HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.
HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion.
HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another–plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid.
HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass.
HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differences.
HELPED are those who KNOW.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.
13. 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.
14. Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.
15. Activism is my rent for living on the planet.
16. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.
17. Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.
18. 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.
19. Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.
20. All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men. But I never thought I’d have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me.
21. Look closely at the present you are constructing:
it should look like the future you are dreaming.
22. I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.
23. Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
24. In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they’re still beautiful.
25. Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.
26. Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself.
27. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
28. Horses make a landscape look beautiful.
29. In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.
30. I’m mad about the waste that happens when people who love each other can’t even bring themselves to talk.
31. A grown child is a dangerous thing.
32. Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up the flowers, wind, water, a big rock.
33. The nature of this flower is to bloom.
34. Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.
35. Everything want to be loved.
36. The more I wonder, the more I love.
37. When life descends into the pit
I must become my own candle
Willingly burning my self
To light up the darkness around me.
38. 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?
39. We are the ones we have been waiting for
40. Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.
41. Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.
42. People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.
43. Never offer your heart
to someone who eats hearts
who finds heartmeat
delicious
but not rare
who sucks the juices
drop by drop
and bloody-chinned
grins
like a God.
44. I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.
45. She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.
46. When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.
47. 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.
48. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?
49. She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it.
50. I have fought and kicked and fasted and prayed and cursed and cried myself to the point of existing.
51. You must learn to love only that which cannot be stolen.
52. Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
53. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.
54. Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.
55. 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.
56. The world is changing. It is no longer a world just for boys and men
57. 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.
58. It is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.
59. 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 some-times it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for l. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, Lord. Feeling like shit.
60. If you’re silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.
