Quotes from Alice Walker

we are the ones we have been waiting for

Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

Laughter isn't even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out. Truly the suffering is great, here on earth. We blunder along, shredded by our mistakes, bludgeoned by our faults. Not having a clue where the dark path leads us. But on the whole, we stumble along bravely, don't you think?

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.

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

Never offer your heart to someone who eats hearts who finds heartmeat delicious but not rare who sucks the juices drop by drop and bloody-chinned grins like a God.

Who am I to tell her who to love? My job just to love her good and true myself. P. 237

The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: 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.

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.

When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?

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.

a womanist) 3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.

Surely the earth can be saved by all the people who insist on love.

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

She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it.

What you hope for, you also fear.

I have fought and kicked and fasted and prayed and cursed and cried myself to the point of existing.

The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom Rebellious. Living. Against the Elemental Crush. A Song of Color Blooming For Deserving Eyes. Blooming Gloriously For its Self.

Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored