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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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Walter Dean Myers
Age: 76 †
Born: 1937
Born: August 12
Died: 2014
Died: July 1
Novelist
Writer
Martinsburg
West Virginia
Walter Milton Myers
Black
Segregation
Ideas
Excellence
Every
Value
Taught
Went
Values
Idea
Born
Voluntary

More quotes by 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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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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No matter what...ball made my heart beat faster, made me want to jump up and down and be Superman. That's what life was about anyway, being Superman and living like life itself was important. Basketball made my life important.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Each generation seems to invent its own reasons for war.
Walter Dean Myers
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What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league.
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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What I do with my books is to create windows to my world that all may peer into. I share the images, the feelings and thoughts, and, I hope, the delight.
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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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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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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With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.
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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Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.
Walter Dean Myers