Alice Walker Quotes

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

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

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

Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.

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

I don’t need a certain number of friends, just a number of friends I can be certain of.

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

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

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.

Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.

There is no graceful way to carry hatred.

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

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

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.

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

we are the ones we have been waiting for

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.

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance.

Every soul is to be cherished, every flower is to bloom.

Propaganda is amazing, people can be led to believe anything.

A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world.

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'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.

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

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

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

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

The Nature of This Flower is to bloom.

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

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.

Decide that you know what you think is good for you and go ahead and do it.

Wherever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared.

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?

Be an outcast. Be pleased to walk alone.

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

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.

As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

We writers - we're the snowflakes of the literary world. We each have our own shape.

Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.

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

The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.