Quotes by Alice Walker
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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.

Helped are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth. -- -- -The Gospel According to Shug.

And when they spy on us let them discover us loving.

Be what they do not want:
Be thoughtful.
Be skilled at loving.
Be of good heart.
Be of the world tribe.

How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, and hopefully embraced upon arrival, impacts the whole of our time on earth.

The world has changed: it did not change without your prayers without your faith without your determination to believe in liberation and kindness; without your dancing through the years that had no beat.

You a low down dog is what's wrong. It's time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.

War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.

Activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet.

I am not interested in being a role model, or in fulfilling the expectations of others. I know I am of most use to others and to myself by being this unique self: Nature, I have noticed, is not particularly devoted to copies, and human beings needn't be either.

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone.

Well how you spect to make her mind? Wives is like children. You have to let 'em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do better than a good sound beating. (Walker 2000: 34).

All my life I had to fight... But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house... I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

In each of us, there is a little voice that knows exactly which way to go. And I learned very early to listen to it, even though it has caused so much grief and havoc, and I think that is the only answer.

The good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that's who She thinks we all are.

I had assumed that the Earth, the spirit of the Earth, noticed exceptions-those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the Earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.

Honestly, that is the most important thing to me: Can I continue to live up to my own expectations of myself -- and not fall back into slacking?

Helped are those too busy living to respond when they are wrongfully attacked: on their walks they shall find mysteries so intriguing as to distract them from every blow.

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.

Helped are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child.

People who work hard often work too hard. ... May we learn to honor the hammock, the siesta, the nap and the pause in all its forms.

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.

America is America. It's a capitalist system. They leaders have enshrined that belief that profit matters more than anything else. The polarization of the society is just the resurfacing of that.

I think America has always been polarized.

Alice Walker
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.

Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.

For instance: scorpions, vipers, and yellow jackets in paradise? How to accept gracefully the part of GOD that stings!

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

People will say to you, Oh, you are fearless. That is so not true. We should stop saying that about people. It's a slander, really.

Whoever you are, whatever you are, start with that, whether salt of the earth or only white sugar.

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.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

The harm that you do to others is the harm that you do to yourself and you cannot think then that you can cause wars in other parts of the world and destroy people and drone them without this having a terrible impact on your own soul and your own consciousness.

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say.

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.

You don't need organized religion to connect with the universe. Often a church is the only place you can go to find peace and quiet... But it shouldn't be confused with connecting with one's spirit.

Hope is a woman who has lost her fear.

There is so much we don't understand. And so much unhappiness comes because of that.

Our mothers and grandmothers ... moving to music not yet written.

Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.

The earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.

How sad now never to see men holding hands, while everywhere one looks they are holding guns.

I've learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

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.

The more I wonder, the more I love.

There is a way forward
and yes
it is with a broken
heart
but it is our own way
collectively convened,
pondered,
shared.

Everything wanna be loved. Us sing and dance, and holla just wanting to be loved.

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.

I think I'm led by spirit. I think I'm led by a sense of what is right and what feels good to me -- what I accept, what is joyful, what is positive. I see my mission, in a way, as carrying that forward -- not so much by preaching, but by embodiment.

When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle Willingly burning my self To light up the darkness around me.

It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it.

If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be eaten, and who never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It's like...you're just eating misery. You're eating a bitter life.

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

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.

Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

It is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.

Helped are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.

Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.

Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.

Subservience of any kind is death to the spirit.

Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions of your life and wrap around you like a shawl, to parry stones, to keep you warm.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

I prefer to praise people and the world rather than criticize them and it.

I don't generally read reviews.

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

My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.

I gave my archive to Emory University because there's a really dear friend who teaches there, Rudolph Byrd, and he's the editor.

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

I love the women's movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn't in her.

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

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.

We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

A good model of how to 'work with the enemy' internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

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.

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

I have such respect for 'Democracy Now!'

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

It is crucial that young people are taught sustainable child production and rearing.

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

You cannot see the changes that you're dreaming about, because they're internal.

I advocate that every woman be a part of a circle, and a circle that meets at least once a month, or if you can't do that, once every two months or every four months.

I live a very secluded life, a very contemplative life and a very meditative one. That is my ideal life.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.