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When I began to read, I began to exist

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
Exist
Read
Began

More quotes by 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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Think about all the tomorrows of your life.
Walter Dean Myers
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Reading is not optional.
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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Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?
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 think we're different, but when it comes around, we end up needing the same things. Somebody to love us. Somebody to respect us.
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 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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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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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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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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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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But now, like a fallen sparrow On a golden chain, I'm forever bound in shadow, A prisoner to my pain.
Walter Dean Myers
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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.
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
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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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I write in a small office at home.
Walter Dean Myers
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The movie is more real in so many ways than the life I am leading. No, that’s not true. I just desperately wish this was only a movie.
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