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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?

Walter Dean Myers

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Walter Dean Myers
Age: 76 †
Born: 1937
Born: August 12
Died: 2014
Died: July 1
Novelist
Writer
Martinsburg
West Virginia
Walter Milton Myers
Mean
Latino
Really
Reflect
Life
Welfare
Gay
Valuable
Whether
Read
Doesn

More quotes by Walter Dean Myers

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With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.
Walter Dean Myers
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We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct.
Walter Dean Myers
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America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true.
Walter Dean Myers
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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
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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
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It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.
Walter Dean Myers
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I like people who take responsibility for their lives.
Walter Dean Myers
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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
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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.
Walter Dean Myers
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I write in a small office at home.
Walter Dean Myers
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My life is not packaged, Not tidy. There are leftover strands and jagged Edges that cut even my friends.
Walter Dean Myers
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What some people wanted was sometimes too hard to get, and the stress of trying was sometimes too hard to deal with... Maybe doing well in life was just too hard for some people.
Walter Dean Myers
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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.
Walter Dean Myers
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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.
Walter Dean Myers
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To fight for one's country, to offer one's very life to promote the well being of the United States, is truly a noble undertaking. But so is the vigilance of the citizen who carefully examines our leaders to see if political problems are being solved by wars simply because this seems to be the easiest solution.
Walter Dean Myers
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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.
Walter Dean Myers
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As a child I wanted to be a professional athlete or lawyer.
Walter Dean Myers
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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
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The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.
Walter Dean Myers
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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