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Reading is not optional.

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
Reading
Optional

More quotes by 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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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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When I began to read, I began to exist
Walter Dean Myers
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I like people who take responsibility for their lives.
Walter Dean Myers
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But in the end, we learn we can forgive most people. The cushion of mortality makes their wrongdoing seem less dark, and whatever roads they traveled seem less foolhardy.
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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I talk to myself out loud at times, and feel embarrassed when people overhear me.
Walter Dean Myers
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I write in a small office at home.
Walter Dean Myers
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And what I was feeling was the wonder Of being more than me, of being more Than mere here and now allowed I had become a shining star, a burning nova Exploded with love Flying through an endlessly Expanding universe Away from the me that was Toward a me that is beyond Understanding.
Walter Dean Myers
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Looks to me like you've been making garbage for a while and dragging it with you. Now you need to get out of here, and that garbage is weighing you down.
Walter Dean Myers
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Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?
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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That's what's wrong with women. They want you to wait for them until they get ready and then they don't even tell you how they feel.
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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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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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'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.
Walter Dean Myers
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We’re suggesting that [kids are] missing something if they don’t read but, actually, we’re condemning kids to a lesser life. If you had a sick patient, you would not try to entice them to take their medicine. You would tell them, ‘Take this or you’re going to die.’ We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.
Walter Dean Myers
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Forever in your arms Is where I want to be Holding you close Within the space That once held only me... Forever in your warmth The place for me and you I feel the sun Our life's just begun I know you feel it too
Walter Dean Myers
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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.
Walter Dean Myers