Alice Walker Quotes

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.

You can just keep going and going and going, and you never get to the end of it because there is no end. The ending is a beginning. If you feel like that, then you accept that wherever you have to stop on this journey, you continue in some other form somewhere else.

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.

I'm the most stubborn person I know.

You have to steal back yourself. You have to steal back your own mind. Meditation helps in that area.

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.

I think I've actually returned to a kind of realism about how the world works. That's helpful. Because 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.

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

When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle Willingly burning my self To light up the darkness around me.

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.

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.

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?

Whenever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared. I have been helped, supported, encouraged and nurtured by people of all races, creeds, colors and dreams.

You die - and this is why manmade religions don't work for so many of us. The notion that you're dead and that's the end, and they even try to contain you in coffins. They make them out of steel and stuff. But really, your journey - for all you know - is just beginning. For all I know, what you see now is just a tiny little seed. So, I may blossom into an entire - I don't know - something in the sky. Who knows where we're going?

The world is changing. It is no longer a world just for boys and men

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

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.

Yoga means to bind back, unite. To bring the body and the soul together. For this reason the practice of yoga is a holy endeavor and the teaching of it to our people a very high calling.

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.

The nature of this flower is to bloom.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.

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

Every soul is to be cherished, every flower is to bloom.

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.

Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

Nature has created us with the capacity to know God, to experience God.

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

Be compassionate to everyone. Don't just search for whatever it is that annoys and frightens you-see beyond those things to the basic human being. Especially see the child in the man or woman. Even if they are destroying you, allow a moment to see how lost in their own delusion and suffering they are.

The protection of evil must be the most self-destructive job.

The long-term accommodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is ... forgetfulness.

You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas? [...] He laughed. That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can't quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.

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

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

I am an elder, and I am delighted to be an elder. I would like to exhibit [and] explore it more - what an elder could mean in this time. But, I'd like to show that elders are good for us - that they can be good for us.

But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain

Humans - whatever billions we are - we don't have the control. We are considered expendable, basically.

Love likes to extend itself. If you receive it in a book - or however you get it - then your duty is to extend it beyond.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

I can spend two hours grubbing about in my garden, dazed with pleasure and intent, and it feels like five minutes.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

How sad now never to see men holding hands, while everywhere one looks they are holding guns.

A grown child is a dangerous thing.

It must become a right of every person to die of old age. And if we secure this right for ourselves, we can, coincidentally, assure it for the planet.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.