Quotes by Alice Walker

"It is because I recognize the brutality with which my own multi-branched ancestors have been treated that I can identify the despicable, lawless, cruel, and sadistic behavior that has characterized Israel's attempts to erase a people, the Palestinians, from their own land."

"Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge."

"We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone."

"Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender."

"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."

"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."

"I'm sure we, the American people, are the butt of jokes by those in power."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister."

"I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like - when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn't look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that's terrorism, too."

"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."

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

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

"The dropping of bombs on people - isn't that terrorism?"

"Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it's a good place that we're all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it."

"If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it."

"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."

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

"I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine."

"Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be."

"How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion."

"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."

"I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything."

"Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly."

"“Progress” affects few. Only revolution can affect many."

"I'm not lesbian; I'm not bisexual; I'm not straight. I'm just curious."

"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."

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

"Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home."

"And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read."

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

"'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding."

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

"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."

"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.'"

"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."

"The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe."