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Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.

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
Keeping
Friendship
Cutting
Easy
Hard
Life
People

More quotes by Walter Dean Myers

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My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read.
Walter Dean Myers
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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.
Walter Dean Myers
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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
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As a child I wanted to be a professional athlete or lawyer.
Walter Dean Myers
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the beast is the monster that destroys your dream
Walter Dean Myers
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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
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You cannot live this life anymore without the ability to read.
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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When we think of war, the tendency is to picture young soldiers only in their military roles. To a large extent this dehumanizes the soldiers and makes it easier for society to commit them to combat.
Walter Dean Myers
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New York is my favorite city.
Walter Dean Myers
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Violence was just as much about WHAT was happening as it was how it happened.
Walter Dean Myers
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I admired the work ethic of the cowboys I read about. The idea of these young people taking on this much responsibility was impressive. I would like modern readers to have an appreciation of this.
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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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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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.
Walter Dean Myers
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The idea of voluntary segregation went against every value I had been taught. What did being born black have to do with excellence?
Walter Dean Myers
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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
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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
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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
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I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries.
Walter Dean Myers