29 Quotes by Julius Lester

Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

Perhaps nothing is so wounding to a writer than being accused of having written something that hurts a child. Censorship is an attitude of mistrust and suspicion that seeks to deprive the human experience of mystery and complexity. But without mystery and complexity there is no wonder; there is no awe; there is no laughter.

I write because the lives of all of us are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details.

A good teacher is one who helps you become who you feel yourself to be. A good teacher is also one who says something that you won’t understand until 10 years later.

Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.

Some wounds go so deep that you don’t even feel them until months, maybe years, later.

Dying ain’t important. Everyone does that. What’s important is how well you do your living.

We remember with our emotions. The things that were important in our emotional life, that’s what we remember.