Alice Walker Quotes

196 Sourced Quotes

I knew I wanted my own suffering, the suffering of women and little girls, still cringing before the overpowering might and weapons of the torturers, to be the subject of a sermon. Was woman herself not the tree of life? And was she not crucified? Not in some age no one even remembers, but right now, daily, in many lands on earth?

Alice Walker
Just be what it is that you are, and that is just fine. You don't have to be what you're not in any way. Live that and live that fully, and that is where you discover ecstasy. You can't really have ecstasy as something other than yourself

Alice Walker
As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.

Alice Walker
This could be our revolution: to love what is plentiful as much as what's scarce.

Alice Walker
Then there was
the
picture of
the
bleak-eyed
little black
girl
waving the
american
flag
holding it
gingerly
with
the very
tips
of her
fingers

Alice Walker
Just because I don't harass it like some peoples us know don't mean I ain't got religion.

Alice Walker
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
There was in Meridian's chest a breaking as if a tight string binding her lungs had given way, allowing her to breathe freely. For she understood, finally, that the respect she owed her life was to continue, against whatever obstacles, to live it, and not to give up any particle of it without a fight to the death, preferably not her own.

Alice Walker
Dear God...I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.

Alice Walker
You can love yourself spiritually, physically-in almost any way that anybody else can.

Alice Walker
Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

Alice Walker
I know what I'm thinking bout, I think. Nothing. And as much of it as I can.

Alice Walker
Many people are aware that we are in peril and that there is no trustworthy leadership.

Alice Walker
Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

Alice Walker
It is the song of the people, transformed by the experiences of each generation, that holds them together, and if any part of it is lost the people suffer and are without soul.

Alice Walker
There is no resistance to the idea that what is foreign can be known. Can be understood. Can be held in the embrace of love that holds the Universe. Given this Earth on which we live and grow, given its beauty and generosity, its majesty and comfort, how can one doubt that one is loved? That in fact there is an abundance, not a scarcity of love? It is all anyone ever wants, really, I believe, and it is all around us as we starve.

Alice Walker
Yoga means to bind back, unite. To bring the body and the soul together. For this reason the practice of yoga is a holy endeavor and the teaching of it to our people a very high calling.

Alice Walker
After thousands and thousands of years of women and men living apart, the Ababa had, with great trepidation, experimented with the two tribes living, a couple to a household, together. Each person must remain free, they said. That is the main thing. And so they had designed a dwelling shaped like a bird.

Alice Walker
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

Alice Walker
The only way to solace anyone who loved you in life is to be a good memory

Alice Walker
Ain't no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest.

Alice Walker
He beat me like he beat the children. Cept he don't never hardly beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how come I know trees fear man.

Alice Walker
Allowing freedom to others brings freedom to ourselves.

Alice Walker
But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

Alice Walker
Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.

Alice Walker
What a burden to think one is conceived in sin rather than in pleasure; that one is born into evil rather than into joy.

Alice Walker
There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom. Vivid. Alive. One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace.

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
How to teach a barren world to dance? It is a contradiction that divides the world.

Alice Walker
There is a magic
lingering after people
to whom success is merely personal.

Alice Walker