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.
– Alice Walker
Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.
– Alice Walker
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
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
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
– 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.
– Alice Walker
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
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.
– Alice Walker
In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.
– 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
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.
– Alice Walker
It seems our fate to be incorrect (look where we live, for example), and in our incorrectness stand.
– Alice Walker
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
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
– Alice Walker
Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.
– Alice Walker
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
– Alice Walker
Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.
– Alice Walker
People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.
– Alice Walker
Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.
– Alice Walker
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.
– Alice Walker
The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?'
– Alice Walker
The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.
– Alice Walker
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.
– Alice Walker
Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.
– Alice Walker
The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.
– Alice Walker
How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers' names.
– Alice Walker
Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
War contributes greatly to global warming, which shouldn't surprise us. All those bombs going off, all those rockets, all those planes and helicopters. All that fuel of various kinds being used. It pollutes the air and water of this very fragile and interconnected planet.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.
– Alice Walker
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
– Alice Walker
The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.
– Alice Walker
Politically, the world is so confused right now - there's so much suffering caused by various movements by various parties and people in power in government.
– Alice Walker
My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.
– Alice Walker
I'm sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power.
– Alice Walker
I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.'
– Alice Walker
I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.
– Alice Walker
I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.
– Alice Walker
I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish.
– Alice Walker
I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it that's my religion.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.
– Alice Walker
Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.
– Alice Walker
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.
– Alice Walker
As you know from school, it's when you have not prepared for the test that you have the fear of failing. And if you have prepared, even if you fail, you've done your best.
– Alice Walker
As an elder of the Americas and of the rest of the planet, it is my responsibility to care for and protect, to the best of my ability, the young.
– Alice Walker
All History is current all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.
– Alice Walker
'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.