Quotes from Julius Lester

To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?

Perhaps nothing is so wounding to a writer than being accused of having written something that hurts a child. Censorship is an attitude of mistrust and suspicion that seeks to deprive the human experience of mystery and complexity. But without mystery and complexity there is no wonder; there is no awe; there is no laughter.

Just because you're bron to someone, it doesn't mean you belong to them.

di lahat ng payo makakabuti para sa 'tin dahil di man lahat ng naranasan ng iba..ay kagaya ng eksaktong nararanasan ng bawat isa.

Often, the human animal dresses terror in rage, and expresses both in a way unlike either.

part of the mind's job was to cast doubt on what the heart knew to be true, and the heart, because it had no words, often lost the argument

B. A. Botkin's Lay My Burden Down and the Federal Writers' Project book, The Negro in Virginia.

Its hardness and solidity had been an odd kind of comfort. Do not wish for anything. Be and endure. The Old African had learned that enduring was power too, and just as he had been drawn to the boulder, so the slaves, after a while, were drawn to him.

The failure of modern living is the failure of the imagination...Literature is the royal road that enables us to enter the realm of the imagination.

Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.

We remember with our emotions. The things that were important in our emotional life, that's what we remember.

Faith is not something that one has; faith is something that one practices at the very moment in your life when you really don't believe anything, and you're in the worst kind of despair.

It ain't how long you know somebody that means anything. It's what that person mean to you in your heart.

To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?

Just because she's dead it doesn't mean I stopped loving her or that she stopped loving me. It's just her body that left. The love didn't. —Jenna Richards

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

How can I love you if I don't know what hurts you?

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.

I'm tired of thinking and I'm really tired of Feeling. —Jenna Richards

But I want you around even when I don't need you. —Jeremy Richards

Just because she's dead it doesn't mean I stopped loving her or that she stopped loving me. It's just her body that left. The love didn't. —Jenna Richards

It ain't how long you know somebody that means anything. It's what that person mean to you in your heart.

We remember with our emotions. The things that were important in our emotional life, that's what we remember.