Quotes By Alice Walker

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

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.

I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

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.

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.

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

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

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

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

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

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

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

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

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn't exist except as a part of everything.

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

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

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

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

I'm the most stubborn person I know.

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.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

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.