Author: Alice Walker

Cites

• Stevie Wonder (3)
  • IN: The Colour Purple (1983) NULL, American
    EPIGRAPH: Show me how to do like you show me how to do it.
    FROM: Do Like You, (1980), Song, US
  • IN: The Color Purple (1982) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Show me how to do like you Show me how to do it.
    FROM: Do Like You, (1980), Song, US
• Bernice Reagon (1)
  • IN: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983) Non-Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I come out of a tradition where those things are valued; where you talk about a woman with big legs and big hips and black skin. I come out of a black community where it was all right to have hips and to be heavy. You didn't feel that people didn't like you. The values that [imply] you must be skinny come from another culture... Those are not the values that I was given by the women who served as my models. I refuse to be judged by the values of another culture. I am a black woman, and I will stand as best I can in that imagery.
    FROM: Black Women and Liberation Movements, (1983), Speech, US
• Mirella Riccardi (1)
  • IN: Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I had always got on well with the Africans and enjoyed their company, but commanding the people on the farm, many of whom had watched us grow up, was different. With the added experience of my safaris behind me, I had begun to understand the code of "birth, copulation and death" by which they lived. Black people are natural, they possess the secret of joy, which is why they can survive the suffering and humiliation inflicted upon them. They are alive physically and emotionally, which makes them easy to live with. What I had not yet learned to deal with was their cunning and natural instinct for self-preservation.
    FROM: African Saga, (1982), Book, Kenya
• NULL (1)
  • IN: Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: When the axe came into the forest, the trees said the handle is one of us.
    FROM: Bumper Sticker, (1982), NULL, NULL
• Mae West (1)
  • IN: The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart (2000) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I wrote the story myself. It's all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US
• Matthew Father Fox and Rupert Sheldrake (1)
  • IN: By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: We should rise up and praise when we talk about what friendship is and love is and what lovers are about -- this interpenetration of one another's souls by way of the body. That's so marvellous! I think angels are envious of human because we have bodies; they don't, and love-making makes the angels flap their wings in envy... Human sexuality is a mystical moment in the history of the Universe. All the angels and all the other beings come out to wonder at this.
    FROM: Natural Grace: Dialogues on Science and Spirituality, (1996), Book, NULL
• a.w. (1)
  • IN: By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The reason people and angels hover around human sexuality is because it is a light source that has been kept in the dark.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, NULL
• Marlo Morgan (1)
  • IN: Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Everything in the universe has a purpose. There are no misfits, there are no freaks, there are no accidents. There are only things we don't understand.
    FROM: Mutant Message Down Under, (1990), Book, US
• Winnie Mandela (1)
  • IN: Now is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: So far, there is no law against dreaming.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, South Africa
• Black Elk (1)
  • IN: Meridian (1976) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now... I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful draem... the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
    FROM: Black Elk Speaks, (1932), Book, US

Cited by

• Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1)
  • IN: The Signifying Monkey (1988) American Literature, History and Criticism, American
    EPIGRAPH: Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind.
    FROM: The Color Purple, (1982), Book, US
• Fiona Wood (1)
  • IN: Cloudwish (2015) Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: I recognized myself in Jane Eyre. It amazes me how many white people can't read themselves in black characters. I didn't feel any seperation between me and Jane. We were tight.
    FROM: The Guardian, "Alice Walker: 'Me and Jane Eyre were tight'", (2014), Speech, US
• Muhammad Khan (1)
  • IN: I Am Thunder (2018) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US