Walter Dean Myers > Quotes

“Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Slam!

“It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken”
― Walter Dean Myers, Scorpions

“Reading is not optional.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“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. ”
― Walter Dean Myers, Slam!

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“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. ”
― Walter Dean Myers, Scorpions

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown

“My life is not packaged,
Not tidy. There are leftover strands and jagged
Edges that cut even my friends.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“the beast is the monster that destroys your dream”
― walter dean myers

“Think about all the tomorrows of your life.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Riot

“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?”
― Walter Dean Myers, Dope Sick

“he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't guilty.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Carmen: An Urban Adaptation of the Opera

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Game

“If you know you don't have a win, then there's no use for you being in the game.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Game

“We lie to ourselves here. Maybe we are here because we lie to ourselves.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Game

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Dope Sick

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Monster

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“But now, like a fallen sparrow
On a golden chain,
I'm forever bound in shadow,
A prisoner to my pain.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Amiri & Odette: A Love Story

“How deep is your game?”
― Walter Dean Myers