Alice Walker Quotes Page 2

“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

“What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.”

“What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.”

“Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.”

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

“I think of the meaning of the word 'testimony'. Originally it named the custom of two men holding each other's test*cles in a gesture of trust, later to metamorphose into the handshake.”

“If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.”

“My fantasy life. Without it I'm afraid to exist.”

“Religion is an elaborate excuse for what man has done to women and to the Earth.”

“There is for human beings no greater Hell to fear than the one on Earth.”

“When the axe came into the forest, the trees said the handle is one of us.”

“World wars have been fought and lost; for every war is against the world and every war against the world is lost.”

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

“A burnt finger remembers the fire.”

“A grown child is a dangerous thing.”

“But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I can't fix my mouth to say how I feel.”

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”

“I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have.”

“If she come, I be happy. If she don't, I be content.”

“Let him hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.”

“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.”

“She look so stylish it's like the trees all round the house draw themself up tall for a better look.”

“The more I wonder, the more I love.”

“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”

“Unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.”

“We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and out of self is what us have to hand.”

“Why any woman gives a shit what people think is a mystery to me.”