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We need to tell kids flat out: 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
Tell
Kids
Need
Needs
Optional
Flat
Flats
Reading

More quotes by Walter Dean Myers

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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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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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Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me.
Walter Dean Myers
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We need to tell young people that America was built by men and women of all colors and that the future of this country is dependent on the participation of all of our citizens.
Walter Dean Myers
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When I began to read, I began to exist
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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I am very much interested in getting parents to read to children, and trying to get people mentoring children. If I can do both I'll be happy.
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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Wherever your heart rests There I will live and be blessed I've tried to line up the things I Needed to say but now my feelings just Tumble from me. I am half foolish, Half drunk with wanting you With wanting to take your hand And leap into the darkness of whatever Life will bring. Love makes me Brave and without love I'm made Nothing.
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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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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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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As a child I wanted to be a professional athlete or lawyer.
Walter Dean Myers
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How deep is your game?
Walter Dean Myers
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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.
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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I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.
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
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As a kid I didn't see black cowboys on the screen. What that said to me was that there were things I couldn't do or be because of my color. What we see others like us do gives us permission to expand our own horizons.
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