Walter Dean Myers Quotes

Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?

When I began to read, I began to exist

Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.

Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous.

We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens.

Everything in life is made up...You make up that you are happy. You make up that you are sad. You make up that you are in love. If you don't make up your own life, who's going to make it up for you? It's bad enough when you die and everybody can make up their own stories about you. —Mr. Hooft

Reading is not optional.

I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.

We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

Think about all the tomorrows of your life.

We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct.

It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.

I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.

One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict.

It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken

But in the end, we learn we can forgive most people. The cushion of mortality makes their wrongdoing seem less dark, and whatever roads they traveled seem less foolhardy.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

Sometimes when things get hard, we tend to set our sights on what's hard, that difficult thing that keeps us upset, and we turn our back on our strengths.

To fight for one's country, to offer one's very life to promote the well being of the United States, is truly a noble undertaking. But so is the vigilance of the citizen who carefully examines our leaders to see if political problems are being solved by wars simply because this seems to be the easiest solution.

I like people who take responsibility for their lives.

They take away your shoelaces and your belt so you can’t kill yourself no matter how bad it is. I guess making you live is part of the punishment.

If anyone could look into my head See or feel the dread that has captured Me or see within this sad, unhappy brain They would only turn away Turn away.

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.

Yeah, that's funny, huh?...Something hurts you real bad and you get used to it. Like being hurt becomes part of who you are.

No matter what...ball made my heart beat faster, made me want to jump up and down and be Superman. That's what life was about anyway, being Superman and living like life itself was important. Basketball made my life important.

I am very much interested in getting parents to read to children, and trying to get people mentoring children. If I can do both I'll be happy.

We all think we're different, but when it comes around, we end up needing the same things. Somebody to love us. Somebody to respect us.

What I do with my books is to create windows to my world that all may peer into. I share the images, the feelings and thoughts, and, I hope, the delight.

Each time I think there is no place lower to go, I find that there is at least one place that will mess you up worse than you were.

I want young people to be hesitant to glorify war and to demand of their leaders justification for the sacrifices they ask of our citizens.

I know what falling off the cliff means. I know from being considered a very bright kid to being considered like a moron and dropping out of school.

I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott.

I think it's difficult for young people to acknowledge being smart, to knowledge being a reader. I see kids who are embarrassed to read books. They're embarrassed to have people see them doing it.

the beast is the monster that destroys your dream

I'm not out here looking for no garbage cans to curl up in. I'm looking for the same good dreams everybody else is hoping for, but I don't see where they are. Or maybe I see where they are, but I don't see how to get there.

We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league.

Forever in your arms Is where I want to be Holding you close Within the space That once held only me... Forever in your warmth The place for me and you I feel the sun Our life's just begun I know you feel it too

As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this.

And I see the - you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can't read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they're not going to be able to make it in our society.

I know I'm tired of thinking about what I should have done yesterday. I know I'm just tired. If I knew what to do with my life, how to fix it up, I would have done it a long time ago. You can't dig that? You think I want to live like I'm somebody's throwaway?

Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?

That's what's wrong with women. They want you to wait for them until they get ready and then they don't even tell you how they feel.

And what I was feeling was the wonder Of being more than me, of being more Than mere here and now allowed I had become a shining star, a burning nova Exploded with love Flying through an endlessly Expanding universe Away from the me that was Toward a me that is beyond Understanding.

On the streets of the city They have taken my Who-I-Am As well as my What-I-Was And now I am desperate for them both Again

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

I admired the work ethic of the cowboys I read about. The idea of these young people taking on this much responsibility was impressive. I would like modern readers to have an appreciation of this.

As a kid I didn't see black cowboys on the screen. What that said to me was that there were things I couldn't do or be because of my color. What we see others like us do gives us permission to expand our own horizons.