Quotes from Walter Dean Myers

Yes, she is the fruit that will Sustain me and yes, she brings A rain that I know can chill But it is a rain so sweet and sings A song my soul insists That I follow, if I would exist As more than I have ever, ever been If my mother calls it evil, then I embrace the sin

Drew, your enemies can mess your life up,' he said. 'Or they can make it easy for you to do it to yourself.' —Fletch

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?

Looks to me like you've been making garbage for a while and dragging it with you. Now you need to get out of here, and that garbage is weighing you down.

I just wanted to be a human being. I just wanted to be whoever I saw in the mirror, without a race or a place in life. What is so wrong with that?

Everything in life is made up...You make up that you are happy. You make up that you are sad. You make up that you are in love. If you don't make up your own life, who's going to make it up for you? It's bad enough when you die and everybody can make up their own stories about you. —Mr. Hooft

Hard work by itself isn't worth two cents on a rainy day if it doesn't give you a good life.

Life is going to be harder for some people. It's going to be harder at different times in our lives. But if you're not ready to die today, then you're going to be responsible for tomorrow, whether you like it or not.

That's the thing people can't see when they're explaining to your butt what's going on and how you messing up. They can't see that you knew it long before they did.

There was a baseball game on but it didn't look real. It was guys in uniforms playing games on a deep green field. They were playing baseball as if baseball was important and as if all the world wasn't in jail, watching them from a completely different world.

She is the only rose that doesn't smell of plastic

Idiots don't know they're idiots, which is unfortunate.

I'm not out here looking for no garbage cans to curl up in. I'm looking for the same good dreams everybody else is hoping for, but I don't see where they are. Or maybe I see where they are, but I don't see how to get there.

Love came to me, but it Just wasn't for me. It touched my heart and left it Lying on the shore, and Love smiled at me, but it Just wasn't for me. It glanced my way with pity, but I soon knew it had other plans. Once again my heart was broken; I was all alone to Mourn. ?Carmen, singing the reprise to Love Has Flown Away

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

pain is the only real emotion. Everything else can be taken away. Love,happiness,joy can always be taken away. Even old sadness can be dissipated if you pee enough ha-ha into it. But pain is pure

If I'm going to be pushed off the sidewalk, I might as well step on off. You know what I mean? Stop pretending something good was waiting around the corner and be what everybody expected me to be, which was another throwaway dude. —Lil J

People who want to hate you can find something in you they don't like. They have a talent for doing that.

Love came easy, but it just wasn't for me. It flew away like swallows on a summer evening. Love sang softly, but it just wasn't to me. Was I a fool to give my love, to give my soul, and more away? My heart aches with longing, cries each night, As I just fall apart. —Carmen, singing Love Has Flown Away

Many teens will see themselves in Myers' account.

Each of us is born with a history already in place

When Miss O'Brien looked at me... what did she see that caused her to turn away? What did she see?

She is a moron and too dumb to menstruate straight. --perhaps the best line from Shooter

Sometimes everybody touches in the dark. You touch to see what you can stand to touch, what you can to feel with your fingers probing parts you never though you could probably probe - Gray