Quotes by Alice Walker

“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.”

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”

“Now. Is this life or not?I be so calm.If she come, I be happy. If she dont, I be content.And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn.”

“Expect nothing. Live frugallyOn surprise.become a strangerTo need of pityOr, if compassion be freelyGiven outTake only enoughStop short of urge to pleadThen purge away the need.Wish for nothing lar...”

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

“Surely the earth can be savedby all the peoplewho insiston love.”

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

“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 goo...”

“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 kn...”

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

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

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

“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 ai...”

“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 jus...”

“And I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have.”

“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 Ne...”

“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”

“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 ...”

“Dear Nettie, I don't write to God no more, I write to you.”

“They be marching hand in hand, like going to war.”