Margaret Walker > Quotes

“When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.”
― Margaret Walker

“Keeping hatred inside makes you git mean and evil inside. We supposen to love everybody like God loves us. And when you forgives you feels sorry for the one what hurt you, you returns love for hate, and good for evil. And that stretches your heart and makes you bigger inside with a bigger heart so's you can love everybody when your heart is big enough. Your chest gets broad like this, and you can lick the world with a loving heart! Now when you hates you shrinks up inside and gets littler and you squeezes your heart tight and you stays so mad with peoples you feels sick all the time like you needs the doctor. Folks with a loving heart don't never need no doctor.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“I'd rather make a good run than a bad stand.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“it's what makes you grow up to have younguns and be a sho-nuff mammy all your own ... . A man ain't but trouble, just breath and britches and trouble”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“She had to find a way to lift them together. The only thing she had was a moan. And she moaned. That moan would become a Spiritual; that Spiritual would become Jazz; which would become Blues then Rhythm and Blues then Rap. That moan would define not only a people but the nation to which they were sailing. That moan would make those people decide that they should, that they could, live.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.
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The Word of fire burns today On the lips of our prophets in an evil age.”
― Margaret Walker

“When we think of Space, when we begin to understand the Martian, we know we must send a black woman on that ship. She is the one who will weather the journey; she will find a song. When she arrives on Mars she will be the one who will greet the life form”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“Thousands of her bravest sons had died on the battlefields.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“David Walker”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“And you tell him I am the God what Am and Always was and Always will Be.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“The people learned to believe that to take pain is more honorable than the evil to inflict it.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“There’s a yellow rose of Texas . . .”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“Now when you hates you shrinks up inside and gets littler and you squeezes your heart tight and you stays so mad with peoples you feels sick all the time like you needs the doctor. Folks with a loving heart don’t never need no doctor.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched the earth and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.

My grandmothers were full of memories
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay
With veins rolling roughly over quick hands
They have many clean words to say.
My grandmothers were strong.
Why am I not as they?”
― Margaret Walker, This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems

“If de Debble do not ketch Jeff Davis, dat infernal wretch, And roast and frigazee dat rebble, What is the use of any Debble?”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“Well, there’s going to be a big Government investigation and for a while they may be quiet, but the whole truth about it is the southern white man is not going to rest until he puts the black man back in slavery.”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee

“but then what can you expect from a nigger-loving man like Dutton when it comes to treating poor white people right?”
― Margaret Walker, Jubilee