Walter Dean Myers Quotes

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

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

Reading is not optional.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.

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.

My life is not packaged, Not tidy. There are leftover strands and jagged Edges that cut even my friends.

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.

the beast is the monster that destroys your dream

Think about all the tomorrows of your life.

he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't guilty.

The movie is more real in so many ways than the life I am leading. No, that’s not true. I just desperately wish this was only a movie.

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

I think that if we can't go back, then we should try even harder to go forward. And I do want to go forward, to a place where loving someone because they have a gentle smile and a friendly hello is as easy as it once was.

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.

If you know you don't have a win, then there's no use for you being in the game.

We lie to ourselves here. Maybe we are here because we lie to ourselves.

Book lovers love books!" her mother announced. "There's romance about the books- even having them seems to have a kind of excitement." from Mr. Linden's Library by Walter Dean Myers

Wherever your heart rests There I will live and be blessed I've tried to line up the things I Needed to say but now my feelings just Tumble from me. I am half foolish, Half drunk with wanting you With wanting to take your hand And leap into the darkness of whatever Life will bring. Love makes me Brave and without love I'm made Nothing.

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?

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.

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.

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

But now, like a fallen sparrow On a golden chain, I'm forever bound in shadow, A prisoner to my pain.

How deep is your game?

My job is to make sure the law works for you as well as against you, and to make you a human being in the eyes of the jury.

What did I do? I walked into a drugstore to look for some mints, and then I walked out. What was wrong with that? I didn't kill Mr. Nesbitt.

Drew, your enemies can mess your life up,' he said. 'Or they can make it easy for you to do it to yourself.' —Fletch

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?

Looks to me like you've been making garbage for a while and dragging it with you. Now you need to get out of here, and that garbage is weighing you down.

I just wanted to be a human being. I just wanted to be whoever I saw in the mirror, without a race or a place in life. What is so wrong with that?

That's the thing people can't see when they're explaining to your butt what's going on and how you messing up. They can't see that you knew it long before they did.

Hard work by itself isn't worth two cents on a rainy day if it doesn't give you a good life.

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.

Love That Dog (INSPIRED BY WALTER DEAN MYERS) BY JACK Love that dog, like a bird loves to fly I said I love that dog like a bird loves to fly Love to call him in the morning love to call him "Hey there Sky!

Yes, she is the fruit that will Sustain me and yes, she brings A rain that I know can chill But it is a rain so sweet and sings A song my soul insists That I follow, if I would exist As more than I have ever, ever been If my mother calls it evil, then I embrace the sin

Idiots don't know they're idiots, which is unfortunate.

She is the only rose that doesn’t smell of plastic

Life is going to be harder for some people. It's going to be harder at different times in our lives. But if you're not ready to die today, then you're going to be responsible for tomorrow, whether you like it or not.

pain is the only real emotion. Everything else can be taken away. Love,happiness,joy can always be taken away. Even old sadness can be dissipated if you pee enough ha-ha into it. But pain is pure

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.

Books have always been among my most trusted of friends, Mr. Linden replied. The best of them allow the mind to wander wherever the author's musings lead.

People who want to hate you can find something in you they don't like. They have a talent for doing that.

...when we feel powerless, we stop trying to find a better way.

There was a baseball game on but it didn't look real. It was guys in uniforms playing games on a deep green field. They were playing baseball as if baseball was important and as if all the world wasn't in jail, watching them from a completely different world.

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.

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

She is a moron and too dumb to menstruate straight. --perhaps the best line from Shooter

Each of us is born with a history already in place

When Miss O'Brien looked at me... what did she see that caused her to turn away? What did she see?

Many teens will see themselves in Myers' account".

Sometimes everybody touches in the dark. You touch to see what you can stand to touch, what you can to feel with your fingers probing parts you never though you could probably probe" - Gray

If I'm going to be pushed off the sidewalk, I might as well step on off. You know what I mean? Stop pretending something good was waiting around the corner and be what everybody expected me to be, which was another throwaway dude. —Lil J

You're not getting in anything, so between us it's going to be outcest, and that's just another word for friendship. —Jocelyn Lawson

Maybe being loved wasn't enough; maybe there was something else you needed not to get in trouble.

Violence was just as much about WHAT was happening as it was how it happened.

Let me think Thinking is all I have If wisdom is a pretense Then let me pretend to be wise

Go. Think. Turn black into white. Night into day. I am tired of thinking. I know where it will lead me and I don’t Want to be there. Go love. Do your thinking.

i just desperately wish this was only a movie.

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.

What some people wanted was sometimes too hard to get, and the stress of trying was sometimes too hard to deal with... Maybe doing well in life was just too hard for some people.

We dreamed a lot of good stuff. Marriage and forever and ever and that kind of thing. It meant everything to me. Not just a lot. Everything.

Cases are won on closing arguments only on television, not in a real courtroom.

People told me to give up trying to be special and settle down to a regular life. There ain't nothing wrong with a regular life, and that's the Lord's truth...But it wasn't for me, because I wanted to be something special...I knew how easy it was for a dream to die. I seen that all around me. You could let it die by just looking the other way—you know, some of those Asian people say they don't kill nothing, but they'll take a fish out of water and lay it on the ground and then say it just died on its own—you can do that with a dream, too. And sometimes you can get so frustrated, you feel so bad about your dream, that you go on and kill it yourself. When you do that, you're killing a piece of yourself, too." —Mr. Cephus

People want to look at you and see your whole future laid out the way they know it, and I was saying that didn't happen. People aren't born with I'M GREAT! flashing on their foreheads.

Love came to me, but it Just wasn't for me. It touched my heart and left it Lying on the shore, and Love smiled at me, but it Just wasn't for me. It glanced my way with pity, but I soon knew it had other plans. Once again my heart was broken; I was all alone to Mourn. ―Carmen, singing the reprise to "Love Has Flown Away

(L)ife is like walking between two tall buildings on a tightrope. For some, the rope is wide enough and the walk is easy. For others, it's narrow and hard and maybe there's a strong wind blowing through their days

Love came easy, but it just wasn't for me. It flew away like swallows on a summer evening. Love sang softly, but it just wasn't to me. Was I a fool to give my love, to give my soul, and more away? My heart aches with longing, cries each night, As I just fall apart. —Carmen, singing "Love Has Flown Away

First, people tolerate evil because they see some benefit to themselves,' he said. 'Then, they feed it in hope that it will turn into something else. Then, they appease it in hope that it will not turn against them. Then, they respect it because they fear it. Finally, someone has to step up and stamp it out! (...)

La Misma ola vagabunda que te lleva te devuelva.

I am too real not to know that real will kill me I am too street not to know what the streets hold for me

I mean, if you think about doing things to people like that, if you think about it too much, it gets all up in you and you can't control it after a while. Then they really got you.

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. It is a strange movie with no plot and no beginning. The movie is in black and white, and grainy.

It's hard to be brave when you can stumble across a world of hurt around any corner.

They're strangers but they still find reasons to hurt each other.

Nothing sounds better than being away from this mess. Nothing sounds better right now than getting higher than the hole I'm in.

If I'm going to have a fight I got to see the win in it so I'll know what I'm fighting for.

Sometimes, when things look terrible...you just need to find the right move to turn the whole game around. When you find it you feel great.

The lure of seeing new places, different ways of life, has been almost irresistible.

The idea of voluntary segregation went against every value I had been taught. What did being born black have to do with excellence?

once i began to read I began to exist

They didn’t allow kids in the visiting area, which was funny. It was funny because if I wasn’t locked up, I wouldn’t be allowed to come into the visiting room.

I wanted to love my father. I wanted to, but I didn't. Sometimes I didn't even like him. he hadn't been a guy you could really get next to, because in a way he was never where you thought he was.

You are not in Disneyland,” he said. “The little people you see running around over here are not Mouseketeers. Some of them are friendly, and some of them have a strong desire to kill you. If you remember that, and manage to kill them before they kill you, then you have a good chance of getting through your year of service here.

Life laughs at me now, Sad, forsaken clown. Dreams crumble and fall. They die silently. Where is there to turn to? Where can I find mercy? Love is what I needed, All I wanted from this life. ―Carmen, singing "Destiny Theme

That night the mosquitoes ate us up. I had bites all over my body. Back home I thought mosquitoes never bit black people. Not as much as they bit white people, anyway. Maybe Vietnamese mosquitoes just bit blacks and whites and didn’t bite Asians.

Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. It is a strange movie with no plot and no beginning. The movie is in black and white, and grainy. Sometimes the camera moves in so close that you can’t tell what is going on and you just listen to the sounds and guess.

In a way it was like a bunch of guys in a game. They were falling behind every minute that passed, but they had lost interest in the score. It was as if they were just a ton behind and had given up on the win. And maybe deep inside they didn't want to peep the score, maybe they knew what was happening but just didn't want to think about it anymore. I could understand that. I had played enough ball in my life, and was deep enough into my game to know I had to be in the hunt for a win or I could lose who I was. And once I lost who I was, my inner me, then all the CDs and all the iPods and all the bling in the world wasn't going to make it right. The strange thing was that everybody was feeling the same thing, that there was a huge game going on, and that the game was going to decide who was a winner and who lost. But so many of the brothers on the corner didn't have a play...I could feel for them because they were just like me in most ways, thinking that everybody should have a number, everybody should have the same playing time, and knowing it wasn't going to happen.

All the authors I studied, all the historical figures, with the exception of George Washington Carver, and all those figures I looked upon as having importance were white men. I didn't mind that they were men, or even white men. What I did mind was that being white seemed to play so important a part in the assigning of values.

فکر می کنم به چیزی احتیاج دارم تا به آن افتخار کنم. دوست دارم به آیینه نگاه کنم و به چیزی که می بینم احترام بگذارم. این کار، احترام به خودم است.

رویاهای زندان برای دوبار شروع کردن و خوشبخت شدن. می دانی، توی زندان تمام رویاها اما و اگری دارد؛ اگر این اتفاق بیفتد یا اگر بتوانی از نو شروع کنی...

Tests were always easy for me. I saw them as games, saw myself as being in a contest against a mythical adversary, and welcomed the challenge.

I took the thin magazine from the pouch in front of me and began to thumb through it. I felt self-conscious, as if I shouldn't be there. My mind began to wander, as I knew it would, back to the boonies. I was on patrol again. Monaco was on point. Peewee and Walowick followed him. Lobel and Brunner were next, then Johnson, the sixty cradled in his arm as if it were a child. We were walking the boonies, past rice paddies, toward yet another hill. I was in the rear, and for some reason I turned back. Behind me, trailing the platoon, were the others. Brew, Jenkins, Sergeant Dongan, Turner, and Lewis, the new guys, and Lieutenant Carroll. I knew I was mixing my prayers, but it didn't matter. I just wanted God to care for them, to keep them whole. I knew they were thinking about me and Peewee.

When you're young, you make mistakes. The big thing that's different now is that when I was a kid, you could survive your mistakes. We didn't have guns. Today, kids have access to guns. The same kids that would have been in trouble and gotten a stern talking-to are now going to jail for fifteen or twenty years. Instead of bloody noses there are bodies lying in the street with chalk outlines around them. The values are basically the same, but it's easier to mess up.

وقتی که بیرون از زندان هستی تصور مردن زندانی ها را هم نمی کنی. فقط فکر می کنی آن ها حبس شان را می کشند و بعد هم آزاد می شوند. ولی خیلی ها آن تو تلف می شوند. بعضی وقت ها به دست خودشان و بعضی وقت ها هم به دست زندانی های دیگر. بعضی ها هم که مثل من مریض و از زندگی شان سیر می شوند. می فهمی چه می گویم؟

توی زندان که بودم، فهمیدم دارم خودم را گول می زنم؛ چون تمام عمرم به حرف زدن گذشته. یک روز به خودم می گویم که بیرون می روم و از نو شروع می کنم. روز بعد هم می گویم که می خواهم یک کاری کنم تا پولدار شوم. ولی وقتی که آزاد می شوم و بیرون می آیم، می بینم که من همان کرب هستم و دنیا هم فرقی نکرده. می فهمی چه می گویم؟

I've always found old bookstores exciting. Whenever I'm in a city that's new to me, I immedicately look through the telephone directory for BOOKS, USED AND RARE. Book dealers send me their catalogs, and I read them as carefully as I would a letter from an old friend, never knowing what treasure I might find. Sometimes the catalogs contain printed material other than books, such as old photographs, newspapers, pamphlets, postcards, and letters.