131 Quotes & Sayings By Alice Walker

Alice Walker is an American author, activist, and poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1987 for her novel The Color Purple.

1
Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved. Alice Walker
2
Expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise.become a stranger To need of pity Or, if compassion be freely Given out Take only enough Stop short of urge to plead Then purge away the need. Wish for nothing larger Than your own small heart Or greater than a star; Tame wild disappointment With caress unmoved and cold Make of it a parka For your soul. Discover the reason why So tiny human midget Exists at all So scared unwise But expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. Alice Walker
3
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. Alice Walker
Surely the earth can be savedby all the peoplewho insiston...
4
Surely the earth can be savedby all the peoplewho insiston love. Alice Walker
The most common way people give up their power is...
5
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. Alice Walker
6
Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. You saying God vain? I ast. Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. What it do when it pissed off? I ast. Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. . Alice Walker
7
I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love. Alice Walker
I think it pisses God off if you walk by...
8
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. Alice Walker
9
Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up the flowers, wind, water, a big rock. Alice Walker
10
Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I ast. Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It.But what do it look like? I ast. Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It.Shug a beautiful something, let me tell you. She frown a little, look out cross the yard, lean back in her chair, look like a big rose. She say, My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separateat all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can't miss it. It sort of like you know what, she say, grinning and rubbing high up on my thigh. Shug! I say. Oh, she say. God love all them feelings. That's some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves 'em you enjoys 'em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that's going, and praise God by liking what you like. God don't think it dirty? I ast. Naw, she say. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love? and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. You saying God vain? I ast. Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. What it do when it pissed off? I ast. Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. Yeah? I say. Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect. You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say. Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. 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? Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing. Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ____s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall. Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock. But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don't want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it. Amen . Alice Walker
But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even...
11
But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain Alice Walker
12
And I don't believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I'll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will you be. Alice Walker
But I don't know how to fight. All I know...
13
But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive. Alice Walker
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live...
14
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
If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive...
15
If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind. Alice Walker
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.
16
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence. Alice Walker
I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred,...
17
I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing. Alice Walker
18
When I no longer have your heart I will not request your bodyyour presenceor even your polite conversation. I will go away to a far countryseparated from you by the sea– on which I cannot walk –and refrain even from sendinglettersdescribing my pain. Alice Walker
Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.
19
Time moves slowly, but passes quickly. Alice Walker
20
Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed. . Alice Walker
The life of my people is to remember forever; each...
21
The life of my people is to remember forever; each head granary is full. The life of your people is to forget: your thing granaries ("museums"), and not yourselves, are full. Alice Walker
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or...
22
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. Alice Walker
Men make war to get attention. All killing is an...
23
Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate. Alice Walker
24
The mountain of despair has dwindled, and the stone of hope has size and shape, and can be fondled by the eyes and by the hand. But freedom has always been an elusive tease, and in the very act of grabbing for it one can become shackled. Alice Walker
25
If this were a courageous country, it would ask Gloria to lead itsince she is sane and funny and beautiful and smartand the National Leaders we've always hadare not. When I listen to her talk about women's rightschildren's rightsmen's rights I think of the long line of Americans who should have been president, but weren't. Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.Imagine President Martin Luther King confrontingthe youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine PresidentMalcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President StevieWonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or Sweet Honey in the Rockdealing with Anything.It is imagining to make us weep with frustration, as we languish under real estate dealers, killers, and bad actors. Alice Walker
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons....
26
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
27
On Stripping Bark from Myself(for Jane, who said trees die from it) Because women are expected to keep silent abouttheir close escapes I will not keep silentand if I am destroyed (naked tree! ) someone willpleasemark the spotwhere I fall and know I could not livesilent in my own lieshearing their 'how nice she is! 'whose adoration of the retouched image I so despise. No. I am finished with livingfor what my mother believesfor what my brother and father defendfor what my lover elevatesfor what my sister, blushing, denies or rushesto embrace. I find my ownsmall persona standing selfagainst the worldan equality of wills I finally understand. Besides: My struggle was always againstan inner darkness: I carry within myselfthe only known keysto my death — to unlock life, or close it shutforever. A woman who loves wood grains, the coloryellowand the sun, I am happy to fightall outside murderersas I see I must. Alice Walker
Horses make a landscape look beautiful.
28
Horses make a landscape look beautiful. Alice Walker
29
What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life, is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in one's glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity, a fearlessness of growth, of search, of looking, that enlarges the private and the public world. And yet, in our particular society, it is the narrowed and narrowing view of life that often wins . Alice Walker
30
The absence of models, in literature as in life, to say nothing of painting, is an occupational hazard for the artist, simply because models in art, in behavior, in growth of spirit and intellect--even if rejected--enrich and enlarge one's view of existence. Deadlier still, to the artist who lacks models, is the curse of ridicule, the bringing to bear on an artist's best work, especially his or her most original, most strikingly deviant, only a fund of ignorance and the presumption that as an artist's critic one's judgement is free of the restrictions imposed by prejudice, and is well informed, indeed, about all the art in the world that really matters. Alice Walker
31
For several years, while I searched for, found, and studied black women writers, I deliberately shut O'Connor out, feeling almost ashamed that she had reached me first. And yet, even when I no longer read her, I missed her, and realized that though the rest of America might not mind, having endured it so long, I would never be satisfied with a segregated literature. I would have to read Zora Hurston and Flannery O'Connor, Nella Larsen and Carson McCullers, Jean Toomer and William Faulkner, before I could begin to feel well read at all. Alice Walker
32
Now. Is this life or not? I be so calm. If she come, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn. Alice Walker
33
And I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have. Alice Walker
34
They be marching hand in hand, like going to war. Alice Walker
35
The more powerful the powerful appear the more invisible they become, said Armando. This used to work differently than now. In the old days it was said that the powerful merged with the divine and the divine was all that one saw. But now the powerful have merged with the shadow, really with death, and when you encounter them they are really hard to see. Alice Walker
36
I don't know who tried to teach him what to do in the bedroom, but it must have been a furniture salesman. Alice Walker
37
Shug say, What, too shamefaced to put singing and dancing and fucking together? She laugh. That’s the reason they call what us sing the devil’s music. Devils love to fuck. Alice Walker
38
Naw, I say. Mr ____, can tell you, I don't like it at all. What is it to like? He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I ain't there. He never know the difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep. She start to laugh. Do his business, she say. Do his business. Why, Miss Celie. You make it sound like he going to the toilet on you. That's what it feel like, I say. She stop laughing. Alice Walker
39
Dear Nettie, I don't write to God no more, I write to you. Alice Walker
40
What will people say, you running off to Memphis like you don't have a house to look after? Shug say, Albert. Try to think like you got some sense. Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me. Well, say Grady, trying to bring light. A woman can't git a man if peoples talk. Shug look at me and us giggle. Then us laugh sure nuff. Then Squeak start to laugh. Then Sofia. All us laugh and. Alice Walker
41
All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could. Alice Walker
42
Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand she make it look like a weapon. Alice Walker
43
He say, Celie, tell me the truth. You don't like me cause I'm a man? I blow my nose. take off they pants, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss 'em, as far as I'm concern, frogs is what they stay. Alice Walker
44
A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something. Alice Walker
45
Long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along. Alice Walker
46
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. Alice Walker
47
Why should the killers of the world be "the future" and not us? Alice Walker
48
What that song? I ast. Sound low down dirty to me. Like what the preacher tells you its sin to hear. Not to mention sing. She hum a little more. Something come to me, she say. Something I made up. Something you help scratch out my head. Alice Walker
49
The savage rushing of the river seemed to be inside her head, inside her body. Even when the oarswomen, their guides, were speaking to her, she had the impression she couldn't quite hear them because of the roar. Not of the river that did indeed roar, just behind them, close to the simple shelter they'd made for her, but because of an internal roar as of the sound of a massive accumulation of words, spoken all at once, but collected over a lifetime, now trying to leave her body. As they rose to her lips, and in response to the question: Do you want to go home? she leaned over a patch of yellow grass near her elbow and threw up. All the words from decades of her life filled her throat. Words she had said or had imagined saying or had swallowed before saying to her father, dead these many years. All the words to her mother. To her husbands. Children. Lovers. The words shouted back at the television set, spreading its virus of mental confusion. Once begun, the retching went on and on. She would stop, gasping for breath, rest a minute, and be off again. Draining her body of precious fluid.. Soon, exhausted, she was done. No, she had said weakly, I don't want to go home. I'll be all right now. Alice Walker
50
When it is all too much; when the news is so bad meditation itself feels useless, and a single life feels too small a stone to offer on the altar of Peace, find a Human Sunrise. Find those people who are committed to changing our scary reality. Human sunrises are happening all over the earth, at every moment. People gathering, people working to change the intolerable, people coming in their robes and sandals or in their rags and bare feet, and they are singing, or not, and they are chanting, or not. But they are working to bring peace, light, compassion, to the infinitely frightening downhill slide of Human life. Alice Walker
51
I live a very secluded life, a very contemplative life and a very meditative one. That is my ideal life. Alice Walker
52
But what was good tween us must have been nothing but bodies, she say. Cause I don't know the Albert that don't dance, can't hardly laugh, never talk bout nothing, beat you and hid your sister Nettie's letters. Who he? Alice Walker
53
Even as I hold you I think of you as someone gonefar, far away. Your eyes the colorof pennies in a bowl of dark honeybringing sweet light to someone elseyour black hair slipping through my fingersis the flash of your head goingaround a corneryour smile, breaking before me, the flippant last turnof a revolving door, emptying you out, changed, away from me. Even as I hold you I am letting go. Alice Walker
54
Even as I hold you, I am letting you go. Alice Walker
55
Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown. Alice Walker
56
There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground. Alice Walker
57
The three wealthiest people in the world own more than the GDP of forty-eight countries! Alice Walker
58
Peace": the fruit of justice done especially to the Self. Alice Walker
59
Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future. Alice Walker
60
You think you can avoid [pain, ] but you actually can't. If you do, you just get sicker, or you feel more pain. But if you can speak it, if you can write it, if you can paint it, it is very healing. Alice Walker
61
What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears. Alice Walker
62
Hope to sin only in the service of waking up. Alice Walker
63
Once us feel loved by God, us do the best us can to please him with what us like. Alice Walker
64
What she showed me was, Yes, I am Grandmother as she is; there is no separation, really, between us. And that, on this planet, Grandmother Earth, there is no higher authority. That our inseparability is why the planet will be steered to safety by Grandmother/Grandmothers or it will not be steered to safety at all. Alice Walker
65
You telling me God love you, and you ain't never done nothing for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that? But if God love me, Celie, I don't have to do all that. Unless I want to. There's a lot of other things I can do that I speck God likes. Like what? I ast. Oh, she say. I can lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time. Well, this sounds like blasphemy sure nuff. 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
66
He beat me when you not here, I say. Who do, she say, Albert?Mr ____, I say. I can't believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop. What he beat you for? she ast. For being me and not you. Alice Walker
67
Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us. Alice Walker
68
I believe that the truth of any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together. Alice Walker
69
When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us. Alice Walker
70
The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level from second grade to third. With simplifying history and writing it down (or reciting it) for the old folks. With helping illiterates fill out a food-stamps form - for they must eat, revolution or not. Alice Walker
71
Then he say something that really surprise me cause it so thoughtful and common sense. When it come to what folks do together with they bodies, he say, anybody's guess is as good as mine. But when you talk about love I don't have to guess. I have love and I have been love. And I thank God he let me gain understanding enough to know love can't be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan. Alice Walker
72
It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man. Alice Walker
73
Hard times' is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa's 'hard times' were made harder by them. Alice Walker
74
First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man Alice Walker
75
She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it Alice Walker
76
It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period Alice Walker
77
The crushed teapot in the rubbish of the bulldozed house will sing in your ears forever. Alice Walker
78
The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men. Our women are respected here, said the father. We would never let them tramp the world as American women do. There is always someone to look after the Olinka woman. A father. An uncle. A brother or nephew. Do not be offended, Sister Nettie, but our people pity women such as you who are cast out, we know not from where, into a world unknown to you, where you must struggle all alone, for yourself. So I am an object of pity and contempt, I thought, to men and women alike. Furthermore, said Tashi’s father, we are not simpletons. We understand that there are places in the world where women live differently from the way our women do, but we do not approve of this different way for our children. But life is changing, even in Olinka, I said. We are here. He spat on the ground. What are you? Three grownups and two children. In the rainy season some of you will probably die. You people do not last long in our climate. If you do not die, you will be weakened by illness. Oh, yes. We have seen it all before. You Christians come here, try hard to change us, get sick and go back to England, or wherever you come from. Only the trader on the coast remains, and even he is not the same white man, year in and year out. We know because we send him women. Tashi is very intelligent, I said. She could be a teacher. A nurse. She could help the people in the village. There is no place here for a woman to do those things, he said. Then we should leave, I said. Sister Corrine and I.No, no, he said. Teach only the boys? I asked. Yes, he said, as if my question was agreement. There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground. The women also do not “look in a man’s face” as they say. To “look in a man’s face” is a brazen thing to do. They look instead at his feet or his knees. . Alice Walker
79
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. 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. Alice Walker
80
This friendship among women is something Samuel often talks about. Because the women share a husband but the husband does not share their friendships, it makes Samuel uneasy. It is confusing, I suppose. And it is Samuel's duty as a Christian minister to preach the bible's directive of one husband and one wife. Samuel is confused because ti him, since the women are friends and will do anything for one another - not always, but more often than anyone from America would expect - and since they giggle and gossip and nurse each other's children, then they must be happy with things as they are. (Walker 2000: 141) . Alice Walker
81
I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. Alice Walker
82
We do it because we care. We care that Vincent Van Gogh mutilated his ear. We care that behind a pile of manure in the yard he destroyed his life. We care that Scott Joplin's music lives! We care because we know this: the life we save is our own. Alice Walker
83
All these faces look happy enough, say Shug. Big and beefy. Eyes clear and innocent, like they don't know them other crooks on the front page. But they the same folks, she say. Alice Walker
84
The Nature of This Flower is to bloom. Alice Walker
85
I have learned not to worry about love but to honor its coming with all my heart. Alice Walker
86
Women have to summon up courage to fulfill dormant dreams. Alice Walker
87
Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of sisters? Alice Walker
88
No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow. Alice Walker
89
The experience of God or in any case the possibility of experiencing God is innate. Alice Walker
90
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
91
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
92
Our mothers and our grandmothers some of them: moving to music not yet written. Alice Walker
93
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. Alice Walker
94
You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds. When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. . Alice Walker
95
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
96
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. Alice Walker
97
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
98
I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe. Alice Walker
99
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful. Alice Walker
100
I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe. Alice Walker