Margaret Walker

“When I was a child I learned to talk, but I never learned to keep my mouth shut.”

“Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.”

“Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth.”

“Writing is my life. It is a lonely life, but a life of utter fulfillment.”

“I want to write, I need to write. I have to write.”

“Poetry is the bread of life, the substance of our being, the staff of our consciousness.”

“I don't think you can be a writer and not be a reader. That's the first thing you have to do.”

“I am a black woman, and my writing is an expression of my life.”

“We must not be afraid to be who we are.”

“My gran’ther’s words were medicine to me.”

“A writer is a person who is a spiritual anarchist, as in the sense of believing in liberty of heart and mind.”

“For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and their jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power.”