- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
Walter Dean Myers Quotes
Most Famous Walter Dean Myers Quotes of All Time!
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Advertising
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- Nov 07, 2020
I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries.
- Beauty
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- Nov 07, 2020
I had seen the ballet of 'Swan Lake' as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.
- My Own
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- Nov 07, 2020
As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.
- Child
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- Nov 07, 2020
As a child I wanted to be a professional athlete or lawyer.
- Office
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- Nov 07, 2020
I write in a small office at home.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
I like people who take responsibility for their lives.
- Home
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- Nov 07, 2020
I was teased if I brought my books home. I would take a paper bag to the library and put the books in the bag and bring them home. Not that I was that concerned about them teasing me - because I would hit them in a heartbeat. But I felt a little ashamed, having books.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think that what we need to do is say, 'Reading is going to really affect your life.' You take a black man who doesn't have a job, but you say to him, 'Look, you can make a difference in your child's life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.' That's what I would like to do.
- Hope
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- Nov 07, 2020
People still try to sell books that way - as 'books can take you to foreign lands.' We've given children this idea that reading and books are a nice option, if you want that kind of thing. I hope we can get over that idea.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
After so many books and so many years of writing, I have a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I love the process of writing and, if I allowed myself, I would write far too much every day. One weakness which I've struggled to overcome is my tendency to having my characters ruminate for pages.
- Know
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- Nov 07, 2020
We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct.
- Out
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- Nov 07, 2020
We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.
- Centers
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- Nov 07, 2020
And I see the - you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can't read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they're not going to be able to make it in our society.
- Sense
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- Nov 07, 2020
I couldn't speak well. I went to speech therapy for 10 years. And I was sort of frustrated in that sense.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
I didn't even know for years that people ever even got paid for this, because they don't teach you that in school. They don't say Shakespeare got a check.
- Face
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- Nov 07, 2020
I began going to juvenile prisons. And some of these kids face some very, very tough lives. How do they handle these lives? Do they even know that if their life is bad, that they're still OK? Do they know that? Do they know that someone is thinking the same way that they're thinking?
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
I came to Harlem from West Virginia when I was three, after my mother died. My father, who was very poor, gave me up to two wonderful people, my foster parents.
- Children
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- Nov 07, 2020
Thinking back to boyhood days, I remember the bright sun on Harlem streets, the easy rhythms of black and brown bodies, the sounds of children streaming in and out of red brick tenements.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
From my foster parents, the Deans, I received the love that was ultimately to strengthen me, even when I had forgotten its source. It was my foster mother, a half-Indian, half-German woman, who taught me to read, though she herself was barely literate. I remember her reading to me every day from 'True Romance' magazine.
- Book
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- Nov 07, 2020
I read a lot of comic books and any kind of thing I could find. One day, a teacher found me. She grabbed my comic book and tore it up. I was really upset, but then she brought in a pile of books from her own library. That was the best thing that ever happened to me.
- Depiction
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict.
- Poetry
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- Nov 07, 2020
I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.
- Death
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- Nov 07, 2020
My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic.
- Hesitant
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- Nov 07, 2020
I want young people to be hesitant to glorify war and to demand of their leaders justification for the sacrifices they ask of our citizens.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
When my family fell apart, it was such a troubled part of my life... I think I could understand what I was going through, but I didn't have the vocabulary for it.
- Live
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.
- Education
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- Nov 07, 2020
Fifty percent of all meaningful education takes place in the home. What do you share with your child? You share your interests. I was a book person. I read with my son. My wife is an artist. She dragged his little butt around to museums. He's an illustrator of children's books.
- Born
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- Nov 07, 2020
Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous.
- Children
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- Nov 07, 2020
So many organizations have a mentoring arm, but they don't really do it. Their idea of mentoring a kid is giving them general advice. But what they need to do is read with children.
- Man
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- Nov 07, 2020
As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
There were two very distinct voices going on in my head and I moved easily between them. One had to do with sports, street life and establishing myself as a male... The other voice, the one I had from my street friends and teammates, was increasingly dealing with the vocabulary of literature.
- Know
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- Nov 07, 2020
I know what falling off the cliff means. I know from being considered a very bright kid to being considered like a moron and dropping out of school.
- Looking
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- Nov 07, 2020
There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative.
- He
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- Nov 07, 2020
My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think it's difficult for young people to acknowledge being smart, to knowledge being a reader. I see kids who are embarrassed to read books. They're embarrassed to have people see them doing it.
- Know
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the problems is that kids who don't read - who are not doing well in school - they know they're not doing well. And they want everyone to be in that same category.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Now, my mom did not read well and she read 'True Romance' magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the 'True Romance.' And that was wonderful.
- Bits And Pieces
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- Nov 07, 2020
I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena.
- Fight
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- Nov 07, 2020