Margaret Walker

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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