Quote

I think that people don't know how to do anything anymore. My father was a janitor. He could take a car apart and put it back together. He could build a house in the back yard. Today, if you ask people what they know, they say, 'I know how to hire someone.'

Walter Mosley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walter Mosley
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: January 12
Actor
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Walter Ellis Mosley
Take
Asks
Janitor
Think
Father
Yard
Thinking
House
Hire
People
Someone
Yards
Together
Apart
Today
Anymore
Anything
Car
Back
Build

More quotes by Walter Mosley

Image
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
Walter Mosley
Image
I took up writing to escape the drudgery of that every day cubicle kind of war.
Walter Mosley
Image
All of the philosophers I studied were white (with a few Eastern exceptions), and, for that matter, they were all male. Africa, the cradle of civilization, seemed to have no footing in the highest form of human thought.
Walter Mosley
Image
Many & most moments go by with us hardly aware of their passage. But love & hate & fear cause time to snag you, to drag you down like a spider's web holding fast to a doomed fly's wings. And when you're caught like that you're aware of every moment & movement & nuance.
Walter Mosley
Image
I believe that a writer has to tell what they think is the truth in a human experience. The truth of the human experience cannot escape the political.
Walter Mosley
Image
Our collective freedom... depends on our ability to defend the rights of others.
Walter Mosley
Image
When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.
Walter Mosley
Image
All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature.
Walter Mosley
Image
My father cared about the world he lived in, and so he admitted his confusion about his place in America because he didn't want me to make the same mistake in my life.
Walter Mosley
Image
I understood about fear. And I knew better than anyone in that room what Mouse was capable of. But still I had been raised in a place where to show your fear was worse than cowardice. It was suicide, a sin.
Walter Mosley
Image
People don't understand how hard it is to get recognized, how hard it is to get people to read your books. How hard it is to get people to even to understand what they're reading when they're talking to you about their books.
Walter Mosley
Image
Black men of our day were never told, The sky's the limit. ... We could aspire to Joe Louis but never Henry Ford.
Walter Mosley
Image
That's how powerful you are, girl...You pretty, but pretty alone is not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, that's like a mirror. Men and women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can't bear to see you go.
Walter Mosley
Image
A lot of people... kind of make heroes that are separate from us, people who are, you know, like... John Wayne and Errol Flynn and, you know, Denzel Washington... people who are different, who are larger than life.
Walter Mosley
Image
Love makes you blind to your own survival. And if it doesn't then it's not love at all.
Walter Mosley
Image
Purely the idea of writing a lot of books doesn't make you a great writer, but it might be that the process of doing a lot of writing will make you a much better writer.
Walter Mosley
Image
A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him
Walter Mosley
Image
Better to listen to the gospel than to a mortal leader.
Walter Mosley
Image
I always tell people, if a young girl read Beloved as her first novel, she'd have to kill either herself or her mother, because in Beloved you have a mother killing their children. This is not something a child would accept very easily. And would never understand.
Walter Mosley
Image
The police and I have a deal. I don't talk to them and they don't listen to me.
Walter Mosley