Reader > Reader's Quotes

“If you don't like my story,write your own”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“It was then that I realized I could be homesick for a place even though I no longer knew where home was.”
― Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country

“Ma Ma liked to say that a woman could be beautiful without being pretty, but that a woman could not be beautiful without having dignity. It would take me decades to unravel what that meant.”
― Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country

“I put these stories to paper for this country's forgotten children, past and present, who grow up cloaked in fear, desolation, and the belief that their very existence is wrong, their very being illegal. I have been unfathomably lucky. But I dream of a day when being recognized as human requires no luck -- when it is a right, not a privilege. And I dream of a day when each and every one of us will have no reason to fear stepping out of the shadows.”
― Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.”
― Chinua Achebe

“To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”
― Chinua Achebe

“There is no story that is not true.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“My weapon is literature
”
― Chinua Achebe

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
― Margaret Atwood

“A word after a word after a word is power.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
― George Orwell

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”
― Alice Walker

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
― Alice Walker

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”
― alice walker, The Color Purple

“...have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.”
― Alice Walker

“Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”
― Alice Walker