Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

— Alice Walker

Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.

— Alice Walker

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

— Alice Walker

Expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise. Become a stranger To need of pity Or, if compassion be freely Given outtake only enough Stop short of urge to plead Then purge away the need. Wish for nothing larger Than your own small hereto greater than a star;Tame wild disappointment With caress unmoved and cold Make of it a parka For your soul. Discover the reason whys tiny human midget Exists at also scared unwise But expect nothing. Live frugally On surprise.

— Alice Walker

First time I got the full sight of Shut Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man

— Alice Walker

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

— Alice Walker

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn't poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

— Alice Walker

For several years, while I searched for, found, and studied black women writers, I deliberately shut O'Connor out, feeling almost ashamed that she had reached me first. And yet, even when I no longer read her, I missed her, and realized that though the rest of America might not mind, having endured it so long, I would never be satisfied with a segregated literature. I would have to read Zora Hurston and Flannery O'Connor, Ella Larsen and Carson McCullers, Jean Boomer and William Faulkner, before I could begin to feel well-read at all.

— Alice Walker

Hard times' is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa's 'hard times' were made harder by them.

— Alice Walker

He beat me when you not here, I say. Who do, she says, Albert? Mr ____, I say. I can't believe it, she says. She sits down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drops. What he beat you for? She ast. For being me and not you.

— Alice Walker