Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart Quotes

“Do you know what O'Keefe Says about blue? he asked her, blowing out a cloud of smoke, warming to her voice, though he did not remember her face clearly from the opening night's exhibition.

What?

That it is the color that will remain after everything is destroyed.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“Kate thought Yolo was of the bear spirit. The bear, according to ancient people who had known bears well, was of a loyal, generous and young-loving nature. Bear mothers were the most dedicated parents imaginable. The most fierce in protecting their young; but also the most peaceful creatures when left unmolested. People with bear spirit had a certain level feel about them: they often seemed large and strong, even if they weren't particularly. They gave off a vibe that made you want to sit near them. Not to talk, necessarily, but to feel.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“What she showed me was, Yes, I am Grandmother as she is; there is no separation, really, between us. And that, on this planet, Grandmother Earth, there is no higher authority. That our inseparability is why the planet will be steered to safety by Grandmother/Grandmothers or it will not be steered to safety at all.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“Standing beside the river, realizing that the water of earth is recycled forever, she deeply understood this: that there are two "presents." One is of the moment. The other is of a longer moment - the "moment" that includes the history and knowledge one knows. So that, she mused, if the tears shed by the mother of Isis are now part of this river then I am somehow connected to her in this longer "present" that I am able to envision and that contains both of us.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“The savage rushing of the river seemed to be inside her head, inside her body. Even when the oarswomen, their guides, were speaking to her, she had the impression she couldn't quite hear them because of the roar. Not of the river that did indeed roar, just behind them, close to the simple shelter they'd made for her, but because of an internal roar as of the sound of a massive accumulation of words, spoken all at once, but collected over a lifetime, now trying to leave her body. As they rose to her lips, and in response to the question: Do you want to go home? she leaned over a patch of yellow grass near her elbow and threw up.
All the words from decades of her life filled her throat. Words she had said or had imagined saying or had swallowed before saying to her father, dead these many years. All the words to her mother. To her husbands. Children. Lovers. The words shouted back at the television set, spreading its virus of mental confusion.
Once begun, the retching went on and on. She would stop, gasping for breath, rest a minute, and be off again. Draining her body of precious fluid... Soon, exhausted, she was done.
No, she had said weakly, I don't want to go home. I'll be all right now.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“The heaving sickness past, her nausea gone, her bodily fluids replaced, she felt the lightness of being in the open space around her. Her walls the canyon's walls, she owned them not at all; her floor, the river beach. Her view, the heavens. It was, this freedom she was in, the longed-for cathedral of her dreams.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“The world was almost at the point of forgetting what a fine time people can have helping one another. That people like to work together and to kick back after work and share their experiences. What would happen if our foreign policy centered on the cultivation of joy rather than pain? she thought.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“For her life, like human life everywhere on the planet, had speeded up and speeded up until peace was rarely possible. Always there was movement, noise, inevitable and constant distraction [. ...] a madness had seized the earth. The madness of speed. As if to speed things up meant to actually go somewhere. And where, after all, was there to go? The present is all there ever is, no matter how much you lean forward or back.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“He did not use these things anymore, and yet, the thought of letting them go made him sad. He felt they represented times in his life he could not recall without their presence. They represented stories,”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“Even if we live forever, we’ll never get to a place where we can honestly say: There’s nothing happening here; I’m bored. Or, you can be bored, I guess, but you can never say it’s because nothing is happening. Something is always happening. In fact, everything is always happening .”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“The world was almost at the point of forgetting what a fine time people can have helping one other. That people like to work together and to kick back after work and share their expansiveness. What would happen if our foreign policy centered on the cultivation of joy rather than pain?”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“Health is our culture; anything that interferes with it is our bondage.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“Who is it that most needs forgiving?
Who is it that feels so much pain?
Who is it that would really like to fly
Far far away?
Who is that can return
Free and gentle
Like the rain?
It is the Self, my love,
My adored one,
It is the Self
That even now
It is running for its Life
Running to its life
Into the arms
Of death.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“it was this inner peace that attracted peace around her.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“There’s no return from this, no way we will ever come back together again. She tried to accept this clarity as a gift.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“She thought of how diligently she’d worked to free herself. Difficult because of the shock she was in, discovering she was trapped, captured most of all by possessions.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“I’m thinking of the moment something dies and how we instinctively know it. And of how we try not to know what we know because we do not yet understand how we are to negotiate change.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“The more powerful the powerful appear the more invisible they become, said Armando. This used to work differently than now. In the old days it was said that the powerful merged with the divine and the divine was all that one saw. But now the powerful have merged with the shadow, really with death, and when you encounter them they are really hard to see.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“We have had many lifetimes as human beings to learn of the many, many ways we do not wish to be.’
‘But we’re human,’ she said ‘and therefore we already are every way there is.’
‘That’s true,’ he said ‘but there is still a bit of room for choice, which is why it is worthwhile to remain in contact with your ancestors.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“Pain had driven them to spectate from their very selves.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“what is good is integral to itself. That is also why it is not worthwhile to change yourself, your hair or skin or eyes. What is integral to you will always be superior to what is tacked on, simply because it is yours.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“We must acknowledge and reclaim our true size. Dignity is important. Self-respect. We cannot lead by pretending to be powerless. We’re not. Age is power. Or it can be if it isn't distracted by shopping and cooking and trying to look nineteen.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“I was by myself in this frightening place and SHE WAS NOT THERE! my heart sank. I had never felt more alone in my life, and then, just when I was on the point of dying of loneliness and lack of direction, I wailed: ;I: Oh, Grandmother, you are not here! And she said: But you are.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“in the beginning she’d felt bereft, to have been shown so much and to have been patiently taught so much, and then to feel it evaporate. But she’d realized the teachings simply became a part of her. They became hers.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“maybe it isn’t love, maybe it’s a chain.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“It did not seem possible that people would bomb one another rather than talk. What fear was this, that kept silent until announced by the loudest sound on earth, the sound of worlds being destroyed. Was it the fear that ones own terror would be glimpsed, ones own childhood of terror guessed?”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“The experience I had last night is the only kind she’s interested in. [...] being with the people of the world in a certain way, he elaborated, noting her look. A way that erases all boundaries and bullshit.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“opening beyond where I was afraid to go would be the medicine for my cure.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“It is hard to believe, but there is something inside of you, no matter how sick and fed up with your sickness you are, that does not want you to heal. It will actually fight you. Sometimes I think of it as a small boy, he said, and laughed. He is there having s good time at your expense and if you get well he worries there will be nothing left to do. No games to play with your sick body, no games to play with your mind. And this little boy will have to be negotiated . [...] if I am well, you must tell him, there will actually be lots more for you to do. More games for you to play, because we will be much stronger. If we are much stronger, we can go more places. We can have more fun. He is an odd little boy, this part of yourself that wants to control you while you are sick. And sometimes we are all charmed by him. That is why sometimes people who are not very sick will suddenly die. They have listened to his voice too long. It is very seductive.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

“What makes a circle sacred is that those who show up for it are the ones who belong in it.”
― Alice Walker, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart