179 Quotes by Walter Dean Myers

And I see the – you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can’t read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they’re not going to be able to make it in our society.

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.

I’ll never live to write all the stories I have in my head.

But now, like a fallen sparrow On a golden chain, I’m forever bound in shadow, A prisoner to my pain.

I just wanted to be a human being. I just wanted to be whoever I saw in the mirror, without a race or a place in life. What is so wrong with that?

What did I do? I walked into a drugstore to look for some mints, and then I walked out. What was wrong with that? I didn’t kill Mr. Nesbitt.

If you know you don’t have a win, then there’s no use for you being in the game.

Yes, she is the fruit that will Sustain me and yes, she brings A rain that I know can chill But it is a rain so sweet and sings A song my soul insists That I follow, if I would exist As more than I have ever, ever been If my mother calls it evil, then I embrace the sin.

Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous.