Quotes from Alice Childress

We think of poverty as a condition simply meaning a lack of funds, no money, but when one sees fifth, sixth, and seventh generation poor, it is clear that poverty is as complicated as high finance.

Who wants to live with one foot in hell just for the sake of nostalgia? Our time is forever now!

Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.

Two things a man can give the woman he loves...his name and his protection...

Everybody's got some sin, but if it troubles your heart you're a gentle sinner, just a good soul gone wrong.

Gawd might forgive but people never will.

Sound like a promise that can never happen.

A gift - be it a present, a kind word or a job done with care and love - explains itself!... and if receivin' it embarrasses you, it's because your 'thanks box' is warped.

Some truth has no nourishment in it.

A woman need a man to claim, even if it's a dead one.

One day I almost said it . . . after goin over the words in my mind, "Benjie, the greatest thing in the world is to love someone and they love you too." But when I opened my mouth, I said, "Benjie, brush the crumbs off your jacket.

Schoolteachers can be some hard-eyed people, with talkin eyes; they mouth sayin one thing and them eyes be screamin another.

But if we grow stronger...and rise higher than what's pullin' us down...Yes, rise higher than dirt...that fifty pound weight will lift and you'll be free, free without anybody's by-your-leave. Do something to wash out the sin.

Child, when hard luck fall it just keep fallin'.

Don't it give you the goose pimples when you realize that white people can kill us and get away with it? Just think of it! We are walkin' targets everywhere we go—on the subway, in the street, everywhere.

That's how women are, always studyin' each other and wonderin' how they look up 'gainst the next.

That's sin, [...] leavin' on a lie.

Why, workin' people are the grandest folks in the whole wide world. They set the steamships on the ocean and the lighthouse on the land, they give us our breakfast coffee and a roof over our heads at night.

He say, 'You can be somebody if you want.' How the shit he don't know I'm somebody right now? He think he somebody and I'm not.

and nobody would write peace on no walls...'cause it would be peace...and our hearts would be free!

Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave - and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.

Who wants to live with one foot in hell just for the sake of nostalgia Our time is forever now.

And realizing there is no such thing as the Black experience. Time and events allow for change on both sides.

writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.