Home > Author > Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley QUOTES

Walter Mosley QUOTES

1 " We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky. "

― Walter Mosley , Blue Light

2 " The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind. "

― Walter Mosley

3 " If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning... "

― Walter Mosley

4 " It hurts when they're gone. And it doesn't matter if it's slow or fast, whether it's a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When they're gone the world turns upside down and you're left holding on, trying not to fall off. "

― Walter Mosley , Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

5 " The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink. "

― Walter Mosley

6 " I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.” – Associated Press interview, 12-7-11 "

― Walter Mosley

7 " 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 , Black Betty (Easy Rawlins #4)

8 " You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a woman in America in 1910, if you don’t write that she can’t really control her property, that she can’t—doesn’t have any say over her children, that she can’t vote—if you don’t put that in it, then it’s a fantasy. Like, well, how is her life informed? That’s true about everybody. If you write about black people, you write about white men, I mean, it has to be political. A lot of people don’t realize that, it seems. "

― Walter Mosley

9 " Chirren is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two. "

― Walter Mosley , Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins, #1)

10 " I'm not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I'm saying it helps. "

― Walter Mosley

11 " A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him. "

― Walter Mosley , The Long Fall (Leonid McGill, #1)

12 " These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That's because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs. A good short story asks a question that can't be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything. "

― Walter Mosley , The Best American Short Stories 2003

13 " Blood may be thicker than water, but family has them both beat. "

― Walter Mosley , When the Thrill Is Gone (Leonid McGill, #3)

14 " Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try. "

― Walter Mosley , Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel

15 " Mrs. Turner gripped my baby finger.

It's amazing how a man can feel sex anywhere on his body. "

― Walter Mosley , A Little Yellow Dog (Easy Rawlins #5)

16 " We born dyin'...But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah. "

― Walter Mosley , The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

17 " The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures. "

― Walter Mosley , Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems

18 " I think that the power over death and life is the greatest strength that any person can have. It trumps sex and wealth. If I'm willing to die no one can master me. "

― Walter Mosley , Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

19 " It's like a door open at the side of the house and this cool breeze is blowing in over the back of my neck. The breeze is Death whispering and that door is open for me to go through anytime I want. And I want to go through. I want the confusion to stop--no, not only confusion but pain too. "

― Walter Mosley , Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

20 " I destroyed that doll, hoping the sacrifice would somehow reverse time and bring my father back. I was a mad scientist and an angry child. "

― Walter Mosley