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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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Walter Dean Myers
Age: 76 †
Born: 1937
Born: August 12
Died: 2014
Died: July 1
Novelist
Writer
Martinsburg
West Virginia
Walter Milton Myers
Humanize
Write
Young
Writing
People

More quotes by Walter Dean Myers

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I write in a small office at home.
Walter Dean Myers
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Think about all the tomorrows of your life.
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 couldn't speak well. I went to speech therapy for 10 years. And I was sort of frustrated in that sense.
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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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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he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't guilty.
Walter Dean Myers
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We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional.
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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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 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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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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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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Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me.
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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I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.
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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As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.
Walter Dean Myers
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Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.
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