It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Respect, Respectability
The little I knew about my own self wouldn’t have filled a thimble!
—Alice Walker
My activism really is for myself, because I see places in the world where I feel I should be. If there is something really bad, really evil, happening somewhere, then that is where I should be. I need, for myself, to feel that I have stood there. It feels a lot better than just watching it on television.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Activism
The harm that you do to others is the harm that you do to yourself and you cannot think then that you can cause wars in other parts of the world and destroy people and drone them without this having a terrible impact on your own soul and your own consciousness.
—Alice Walker
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Power, Thinking
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Death
The sight of a Black nun strikes their sentimentality; and, as I am unalterably rooted in native ground, they consider me a work of primitive art, housed in a magical color; the incarnation of civilized, anti-heathenism, and the fruit of a triumphing idea.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Religion
People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Appearance, Foolishness, Fools
The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.
—Alice Walker
Topics: God, Divinity, Faith
Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Success, Knowledge, Life, Kindness, Thought, People, Compassion
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers, Violence
I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Worry, Romance, Love
Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Expectation, Expectations, Attitude
The more I wonder, the more I love.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Wonder
Storytelling is how we survive, when there’s no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination. I can’t imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people’s parents, their culture. That’s how we learn from each other, it’s the best way. That’s why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Imagination
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.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Television
People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don’t.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Progress
In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Gardens, Self-Discovery
For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Freedom
Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.
—Alice Walker
As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I’m the Earth. I won’t give up until the Earth gives up.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Earth
How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Mothers
Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of a sister?
—Alice Walker
It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s “mature” critics often are.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Criticism
She say, Celie, tell the truth, 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.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Religion, Churches
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Animals
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Perfection
Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?
—Alice Walker
Topics: Attention, Gardening
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.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Creativity
But please remember, especially in these times of group-think and the right-on chorus, that no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended.
—Alice Walker
Topics: Silence, Friends, Friendship
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Cynthia Ozick American Novelist, Essayist
- Joyce Carol Oates American Novelist
- Annie Dillard American Writer
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- Carol Shields Canadian Author, Academic
- John Updike American Author
- Rita Mae Brown American Writer, Feminist
- Fannie Flagg American Comedian, Novelist
- Andre Norton American Science Fiction Writer
- Anne Lamott American Writer
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