But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

— Alice Walker

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

But what was good tween us must have been nothing but bodies, she says. Because I don't know the Albert that don't dance, can hardly laugh, never talk bout nothing, beat you and hid your sister Nettie's letters. Who he?

— Alice Walker

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

— Alice Walker

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it.

— Alice Walker

Dear Nettie, I don't write to God no more, I write to you.

— Alice Walker

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

— Alice Walker

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

— Alice Walker

Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.

— Alice Walker

Even as I hold you think of you as someone gone far, far away. Your eyes the color of pennies in a bowl of dark honey bringing sweet light to someone else your black hair slipping through my fingers is the flash of your head going around a corner your smile, breaking before me, the flippant last turnoff a revolving door, emptying you out, changed, away from me. Even as I hold you am I letting go.

— Alice Walker