101+ Best Alice Walker Quotes From The Author Of 'The Color Purple'

Alice Walker is a world-renowned writer and powerful activist.

Walker was born and raised by her father, a sharecropper, and her mother, a maid in Georgia. She grew up to write the hugely influential novel, 'The Color Purple'.

'The Color Purple' is a powerful work of fiction that won Walker the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, there is no evidence to suggest that it is based on a true story. This book is the piece of work that Walker became most famous for, but she also wrote countless more essays, poems, short stories and the like. Alice now lives in a countryside home in Mendocino, California, with her partner Robert Allen. If you like quotes by famous authors or feminist quotes, do make sure to also check out our Toni Morrison quotes and The Alchemist quotes, but for now get ready to be inspired by these amazing Alice Walker quotes! From words of wisdom such as,"the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any" to her inspiring advice that "no person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow", you are sure to learn something from these inspiring Alice Walker quotes.

Here are some of the most famous Alice Walker quotes to inspire you. Do you recognize any of these Alice Walker quotes?

1. "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

-Alice Walker.

2. "Being happy is not the only happiness."

-Alice Walker.

3. "No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow."

-Alice Walker.

4. "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.

5. "In wondering 'bout the big things and asking 'bout the big things, you learn about the little ones almost by accident."

-Alice Walker.

6. "Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming."

-Alice Walker.

7. "It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it’s pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it."

-Alice Walker.

8. "Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself."

-Alice Walker.

9. "Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be."

-Alice Walker.

10. "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."

-Alice Walker.

11. "Too much respect for people who are not respectful to you is a sure sign of insecurity."

-Alice Walker.

12. "In every life there comes a point when you have to make a decision about how you will live."

-Alice Walker.

13. "I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence."

-Alice Walker.

14. "Thank you is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding."

-Alice Walker.

15. "The world is as beautiful as it ever was. It is changing, but then it always has been. This is a good time to change, and remain beautiful, with it."

-Alice Walker.

16. "Laughter isn’t even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out."

-Alice Walker.

17. "There is no graceful way to carry hatred."

-Alice Walker.

18. "Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender."

-Alice Walker.

19. "Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as superior knowledge in all too many universities."

-Alice Walker.

20. "How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, and hopefully embraced upon arrival, impacts the whole of our time on earth."

-Alice Walker.

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Here are some great Alice Walker quotes on the topic of love.

21. "Just cause I love her don't take away none of her rights."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

22. "Every stitch I sew will be a kiss."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

23. "The more I wonder, the more I love."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

24. "I feel the less harm I do, the lighter my heart. I love a light heart. And when I know I'm causing suffering, I feel the heaviness of it. It's a physical pain."

-Alice Walker.

25. "Who am I to tell her who to love? My job just to love her good and true myself."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

26. "Every soul is to be cherished, every flower is to bloom."

-Alice Walker.

27. "I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that's fine."

-Alice Walker.

28. "Everything want to be loved."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

29. "The most healthy thing is to be true to your own self, but also, that you have a right to express what you see and what you feel and what you think. To be bold."

-Alice Walker.

30. "I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

31. "You're totally in sync with your purpose and with the universe. And that's fine."

-Alice Walker.

32. "And I thank God let me gain understanding enough to know love can't be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

33. "Wish for nothing larger than your own small heart."

-Alice Walker.

34. "Even if you don't make it, you're fine, if you've given it your whole heart and soul."

-Alice Walker.

35. "The years have come and gone without a single word from you. Only the sky above us do we hold in common. I look at it often as if, somehow, reflected from its immensities, I will one day find myself gazing into your eyes."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

36. "So it's self-interest that I don't want to cause harm."

-Alice Walker.

37. "You can't truly have an open heart until it's been broken."

-Alice Walker.

38. "You must learn to love only that which cannot be stolen."

-Alice Walker.

39. "I have learned not to worry about love, but to honor its coming with all my heart."

-Alice Walker.

40. "My heart hurt so much I can't believe it. How can it keep beating, feeling like this?"

-Alice Walker.

Here are some quotes about 'The Color Purple' that will move you.

41. "We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful..."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

42. "There is so much we don’t understand. And so much unhappiness comes because of that."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

43. "You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

44. "A grown child is a dangerous thing."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

45. "Time moves slowly, but passes quickly."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

46. "People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

47. "Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

48. "We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

49. "We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and out of self is what us have to hand."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

50. "I have a right to be this way... I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to..."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

51. "But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

52. "Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women, the world would be a different place, I can tell you."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

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

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

54. "I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

55. "Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?"

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

56. "If she come, I be happy. If she don't, I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

57. "I can't fix my mouth to say how I feel."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

58. "Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

59. "She look like she ain't long for this world but dressed well for the next."

-Alice Walker, 'The Color Purple'.

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Alice Walker shares some great pearls of wisdom with these writing quotes.

60. "It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become, than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are."

-Alice Walker.

61. "Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence - as it saves most writers who live in 'interesting' oppressive times and are not afflicted by personal immunity."

-Alice Walker.

62. "I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was seven or eight. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels."

-Alice Walker.

63. "There's an ecstatic side to writing. It's like jazz. It just has a life."

-Alice Walker.

64. "It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care."

-Alice Walker.

65. "Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence."

-Alice Walker.

66. "I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself, actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something, no maybe junior, and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning."

-Alice Walker.

67. "I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch."

-Alice Walker.

68. "My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig."

-Alice Walker.

69. "For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that."

-Alice Walker.

70. "A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world."

-Alice Walker.

71. "The artist is the voice of the people."

-Alice Walker.

72. "Storytelling is how we survive, when there's no feed, the story feeds something, it feeds the spirit, the imagination."

-Alice Walker.

73. "Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book."

-Alice Walker.

74. "Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful."

-Alice Walker.

75. "It's really important to have a space that is really clear for whatever is emerging to come."

-Alice Walker.

76. "My writing is very organic. It's what I am."

-Alice Walker.

77. "I can't imagine life without stories, stories from my parents, my culture. Stories from other people's parents, their culture."

-Alice Walker.

78. "The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account."

-Alice Walker.

79.  "I think of it as something that's very essential to my being."

-Alice Walker.

80. "It's so important to unclutter the mind. For me, creativity is greatly impeded just by the chatter and visual clutter of life."

-Alice Walker.

81. "That's how we learn from each other, it's the best way. That's why literature is so important, it connects us heart to heart."

-Alice Walker.

Here are some of Alice Walker's quotes from 'Everyday Use' and other works to get you thinking. Which of these Alice Walker quotes is your favorite?

82. "I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in Church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe."

-Alice Walker.

83. "If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for."

-Alice Walker.

84. "Truly the suffering is great, here on earth. We blunder along, shredded by our mistakes, bludgeoned by our faults. But on the whole, we stumble along bravely, don’t you think?"

-Alice Walker.

85. "Activism is my rent for living on the planet."

-Alice Walker.

86. "Yes, mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me."

-Alice Walker.

87. "What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears."

-Alice Walker.

88. "As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I’m the Earth. I won’t give up until the Earth gives up."

-Alice Walker.

89. "This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy."

-Alice Walker.

90. "How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mother’s names."

-Alice Walker.

91. "Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home."

-Alice Walker.

Here are some quotes about Alice Walker, including those from her inspiring and hopeful book that will inspire one and all. If you love 'Everyday Use' by Alice Walker quotes, you will love these Alice Walker quotes.

92. "If my mind is crowded with ideas or thoughts or plans or other people’s creations there is less room for my own."

-Alice Walker.

93. "The challenge for me is not to be a follower of something but to embody it."

-Alice Walker.

94. "Given this Earth on which we live and grow, given its beauty and generosity, its majesty and comfort, how can one doubt that one is loved?"

-Alice Walker.

95. "Each of us has knowledge of how to live life differently that no one taught us, and that we can find this knowledge inside ourselves and put it to use."

-Alice Walker.

96. "Keep track of family members; talk with them, work, and plan for the future with them, vacation with them, take them with you when you have something joyful to share."

-Alice Walker.

97. "When life descends into the pit, I must become my own candle, willingly burning myself to light up the darkness around me."

-Alice Walker.

98. "Remember that you, yourself, are America. The US. Behave as if you are the entire country and carry yourself with humility and dignity."

-Alice Walker.

99. "The lone wolf is the hungry ghost that can never get enough; whose mouth may be small but whose stomach is boundless. We cannot afford him."

-Alice Walker.

100. "Now I understand that all great teachers love us."

-Alice Walker.

101. "It is the best of times because we have entered a period, if we can bring ourselves to pay attention, of great clarity as to cause and effect."

-Alice Walker.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Alice Walker quotes, then why not take a look at our Alfred, Lord Tennyson quotes, or Alexander Pope quotes too?