Alice Walker Quotes

“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.”

“Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”

“Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.”

“Horses make a landscape look beautiful.”

“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.”

“I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.”

“I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.”

“If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for?”

“If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.”

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

“In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.”

“It is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.”

“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.”

“Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.”

“Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.”

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”

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

“Not only will your teachers appear, but they will cook new foods for you.”

“Part of what existence means to me is knowing the distance between what I am now and what I was then.”

“People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.”

“Resistance is the secret of joy!”

“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.”

“The animals of the planet are in desperate peril. Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.”

“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.”

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

“The nature of this flower is to bloom.”

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