Quotes from Walter Dean Myers

I know I'm tired of thinking about what I should have done yesterday. I know I'm just tired. If I knew what to do with my life, how to fix it up, I would have done it a long time ago. You can't dig that? You think I want to live like I'm somebody's throwaway?

The movie is more real in so many ways than the life I am leading. No, that's not true. I just desperately wish this was only a movie.

We all think we're different, but when it comes around, we end up needing the same things. Somebody to love us. Somebody to respect us.

If you know you don't have a win, then there's no use for you being in the game.

No matter what...ball made my heart beat faster, made me want to jump up and down and be Superman. That's what life was about anyway, being Superman and living like life itself was important. Basketball made my life important.

And what I was feeling was the wonder Of being more than me, of being more Than mere here and now allowed I had become a shining star, a burning nova Exploded with love Flying through an endlessly Expanding universe Away from the me that was Toward a me that is beyond Understanding.

We lie to ourselves here. Maybe we are here because we lie to ourselves.

Yeah, that's funny, huh?...Something hurts you real bad and you get used to it. Like being hurt becomes part of who you are.

On the streets of the city They have taken my Who-I-Am As well as my What-I-Was And now I am desperate for them both Again

But now, like a fallen sparrow On a golden chain, I'm forever bound in shadow, A prisoner to my pain.

How deep is your game?

We're suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don't read but, actually, we're condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, 'Take this or you're going to die.' We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative.

I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems?

To fight for one's country, to offer one's very life to promote the well being of the United States, is truly a noble undertaking. But so is the vigilance of the citizen who carefully examines our leaders to see if political problems are being solved by wars simply because this seems to be the easiest solution.

One of the problems is that kids who don't read - who are not doing well in school - they know they're not doing well. And they want everyone to be in that same category.

I didn't even know for years that people ever even got paid for this, because they don't teach you that in school. They don't say Shakespeare got a check.

Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?

Each of us is born with a history already in place

What I do with my books is to create windows to my world that all may peer into. I share the images, the feelings and thoughts, and, I hope, the delight.

...when we feel powerless, we stop trying to find a better way.

Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?

Reading is not optional.

After so many books and so many years of writing, I have a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I love the process of writing and, if I allowed myself, I would write far too much every day. One weakness which I've struggled to overcome is my tendency to having my characters ruminate for pages.