Walter Dean Myers
Walter Dean Myers
Walter Dean Myerswas an American writer of children's books best known for young adult literature. He wrote more than one hundred books including picture books and nonfiction. He won the Coretta Scott King Award for African-American authors five times. His 1988 novel Fallen Angels is one of the books most frequently challenged in the U.S. because of its adult language and its realistic depiction of the Vietnam War...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 August 1937
CountryUnited States of America
Looks to me like you've been making garbage for a while and dragging it with you. Now you need to get out of here, and that garbage is weighing you down.
But now, like a fallen sparrow On a golden chain, I'm forever bound in shadow, A prisoner to my pain.
Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.
Wherever your heart rests There I will live and be blessed I've tried to line up the things I Needed to say but now my feelings just Tumble from me. I am half foolish, Half drunk with wanting you With wanting to take your hand And leap into the darkness of whatever Life will bring. Love makes me Brave and without love I'm made Nothing.
Forever in your arms Is where I want to be Holding you close Within the space That once held only me... Forever in your warmth The place for me and you I feel the sun Our life's just begun I know you feel it too
Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?
Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard.
Everything in life is made up...You make up that you are happy. You make up that you are sad. You make up that you are in love. If you don't make up your own life, who's going to make it up for you? It's bad enough when you die and everybody can make up their own stories about you. —Mr. Hooft
I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.
Reading is not optional.
They take away your shoelaces and your belt so you can’t kill yourself no matter how bad it is. I guess making you live is part of the punishment.
No matter what...ball made my heart beat faster, made me want to jump up and down and be Superman. That's what life was about anyway, being Superman and living like life itself was important. Basketball made my life important.
Sometimes when things get hard, we tend to set our sights on what's hard, that difficult thing that keeps us upset, and we turn our back on our strengths.
With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.