Quotes from Walter Dean Myers

It's hard to be brave when you can stumble across a world of hurt around any corner.

I mean, if you think about doing things to people like that, if you think about it too much, it gets all up in you and you can't control it after a while. Then they really got you.

When you're young, you make mistakes. The big thing that's different now is that when I was a kid, you could survive your mistakes. We didn't have guns. Today, kids have access to guns. The same kids that would have been in trouble and gotten a stern talking-to are now going to jail for fifteen or twenty years. Instead of bloody noses there are bodies lying in the street with chalk outlines around them. The values are basically the same, but it's easier to mess up.

CUT TO: ERNIE, another prisoner, sitting on john, pants down.

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.

When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy... you can bet he's worried either about his story or his ability to tell it.

Fools commit suicide and think they're doing themselves a favor.

W)hen you're playing with fire you've got to deal with the heat...And fire ain't particular about who it burns.

Things that matter in the morning somehow don't matter in the afternoon.

I've always found old bookstores exciting. Whenever I'm in a city that's new to me, I immedicately look through the telephone directory for BOOKS, USED AND RARE. Book dealers send me their catalogs, and I read them as carefully as I would a letter from an old friend, never knowing what treasure I might find. Sometimes the catalogs contain printed material other than books, such as old photographs, newspapers, pamphlets, postcards, and letters.

the ideas I found in books helped me imagine a life I wanted to live.

That's what makes poor people poor...They're looking to find treasures instead of working and saving every day.

In a sane world, we would be heroes. Teachers would applaud as we walked into the school. There is the smart one, the one who wants to be a writer. And there is the runner.

All of fiction is truthful. What you create is your own truth and no one can take that away or change it.

They're strangers but they still find reasons to hurt each other.

Tests were always easy for me. I saw them as games, saw myself as being in a contest against a mythical adversary, and welcomed the challenge.

Yeah, it's hard, baby It's hard right down to the bone I said Oh, it's hard baby It's hard right down to the very bone It's hard when you're a woman And you find yourself all alone I've been flapping and scrapping And running from door to door You know I've been flapping and scrapping, honey Running from door to door

I have to burn the bridges to eternity

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

How do you keep your guys safe? Coles asked. By killing everything that ain't smiling, and half of everything that is, the marine captain answered.

I asked myself what did Adam know of paradise? said the sheik, who told us to call him Hamid. He woke up one day and found himself in the Holy Garden and he had never known anything else. That's what I think has happened to America. You are a young people. What have you known but the paradise of peace and security and wealth?

Look 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.

To come right down to it, if I take my kind of things in which I believe, then add to that the kind of temperament that I have to whatever I believe in-- these are ingredients which make it just about impossible for me to die of old age. -- The autobiography of Malcom X

To come right down to it, if I take the kind of things in which I believe, then add to that the kind of temperament that I have, plus the one hundred percent dedication I have to whatever I believe in--these are ingredients which make it just about impossible for me to die of old age. -- The autobiography of Malcom X