Quotes from Walter Dean Myers

First, people tolerate evil because they see some benefit to themselves,' he said. 'Then, they feed it in hope that it will turn into something else. Then, they appease it in hope that it will not turn against them. Then, they respect it because they fear it. Finally, someone has to step up and stamp it out! (...)

Maybe being loved wasn't enough; maybe there was something else you needed not to get in trouble.

We dreamed a lot of good stuff. Marriage and forever and ever and that kind of thing. It meant everything to me. Not just a lot. Everything.

Let me think Thinking is all I have If wisdom is a pretense Then let me pretend to be wise

Go. Think. Turn black into white. Night into day. I am tired of thinking. I know where it will lead me and I don't Want to be there. Go love. Do your thinking.

Violence was just as much about WHAT was happening as it was how it happened.

But in the end, we learn we can forgive most people. The cushion of mortality makes their wrongdoing seem less dark, and whatever roads they traveled seem less foolhardy.

What some people wanted was sometimes too hard to get, and the stress of trying was sometimes too hard to deal with... Maybe doing well in life was just too hard for some people.

People want to look at you and see your whole future laid out the way they know it, and I was saying that didn't happen. People aren't born with I'M GREAT! flashing on their foreheads.

You are not in Disneyland," he said. "The little people you see running around over here are not Mouseketeers. Some of them are friendly, and some of them have a strong desire to kill you. If you remember that, and manage to kill them before they kill you, then you have a good chance of getting through your year of service here.

La Misma ola vagabunda que te lleva te devuelva.

Life laughs at me now, Sad, forsaken clown. Dreams crumble and fall. They die silently. Where is there to turn to? Where can I find mercy? Love is what I needed, All I wanted from this life. ?Carmen, singing Destiny Theme

Nothing sounds better than being away from this mess. Nothing sounds better right now than getting higher than the hole I'm in.

The lure of seeing new places, different ways of life, has been almost irresistible.

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. It is a strange movie with no plot and no beginning. The movie is in black and white, and grainy. Sometimes the camera moves in so close that you can't tell what is going on and you just listen to the sounds and guess.

once i began to read I began to exist

I am too real not to know that real will kill me I am too street not to know what the streets hold for me

If I'm going to have a fight I got to see the win in it so I'll know what I'm fighting for.

Sometimes, when things look terrible...you just need to find the right move to turn the whole game around. When you find it you feel great.

All the authors I studied, all the historical figures, with the exception of George Washington Carver, and all those figures I looked upon as having importance were white men. I didn't mind that they were men, or even white men. What I did mind was that being white seemed to play so important a part in the assigning of values.

The idea of voluntary segregation went against every value I had been taught. What did being born black have to do with excellence?

They didn't allow kids in the visiting area, which was funny. It was funny because if I wasn't locked up, I wouldn't be allowed to come into the visiting room.

That night the mosquitoes ate us up. I had bites all over my body. Back home I thought mosquitoes never bit black people. Not as much as they bit white people, anyway. Maybe Vietnamese mosquitoes just bit blacks and whites and didn't bite Asians.

I wanted to love my father. I wanted to, but I didn't. Sometimes I didn't even like him. he hadn't been a guy you could really get next to, because in a way he was never where you thought he was.