Walter Dean Myers > Quotes

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

“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!

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

—Fletch”
― Walter Dean Myers, Game

“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

“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?”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Street Love

“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

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Game

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Dope Sick

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Dope Sick

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Dope Sick

“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

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Game

“Maybe being loved wasn't enough; maybe there was something else you needed not to get in trouble.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Game

“She is a moron and too dumb to menstruate straight.

--perhaps the best line from Shooter”
― Walter Dean Myers

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Dope Sick

“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?”
― Walter Dean Myers, Riot

“Many teens will see themselves in Myers' account".”
― Walter Dean Myers

“i just desperately wish this was only a movie.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“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

“Violence was just as much about WHAT was happening as it was how it happened.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Shooter

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, Dope Sick

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“La Misma ola vagabunda que te lleva te devuelva.”
― Walter Dean Myers, The Beast

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Carmen

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Carmen

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Carmen

“Reading is not optional.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“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”
― Walter Dean Myers, Shooter

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

“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.”
― Walter Dean Myers, The Cruisers