Walter Dean
Walter Dean
Walter Kevin Dean is an American former football running back. He played college football for the Grambling State Tigers at Grambling State University. In his senior year, he led the nation in rushing and won the 1990 Walter Payton Award as the most outstanding player in Division I-AA football. He played professional football for one season in the National Football Leagueafter he was selected by the Green Bay Packers in the sixth round of the 1991 NFL Draft...
afraid bang blind hard people
A lot of people are afraid blind people are going to break, ... They want to get out and bang it up just as hard as a sighted person.
temptation hard-life sometimes
It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken
blind
The one thing you never say to a blind person is, 'Did you see that?'
class grabbed threw
I grabbed a sighted guy, ... and threw him to the ground, and I said to the class, 'Did you see that?'
lay
Did you just lay down for him or what?
blind great people wide
Doing anything great is like a pyramid. You have to have a wide base, ... The whole idea is to get 5,000 blind people doing judo.
bad books celebrated felt found include lives mine needed people raised took
I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.
books children foreign given hope people sell
People still try to sell books that way - as 'books can take you to foreign lands.' We've given children this idea that reading and books are a nice option, if you want that kind of thing. I hope we can get over that idea.
general giving kid mentoring
So many organizations have a mentoring arm, but they don't really do it. Their idea of mentoring a kid is giving them general advice. But what they need to do is read with children.
began causing certain decided good impediment pronounce speech teachers wrote
I was a good student, but a speech impediment was causing problems. One of my teachers decided that I couldn't pronounce certain words at all. She thought that if I wrote something, I would use words I could pronounce. I began writing little poems. I began to write short stories, too.
family fell life troubled understand vocabulary
When my family fell apart, it was such a troubled part of my life... I think I could understand what I was going through, but I didn't have the vocabulary for it.
allowed books characters far good love process strengths struggled tendency weakness
After so many books and so many years of writing, I have a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. I love the process of writing and, if I allowed myself, I would write far too much every day. One weakness which I've struggled to overcome is my tendency to having my characters ruminate for pages.
backdrop ballet beauty child evil grace great noticed production pure saw seen stayed threat
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.
boyhood brick bright brown children easy harlem red remember rhythms sounds streaming
Thinking back to boyhood days, I remember the bright sun on Harlem streets, the easy rhythms of black and brown bodies, the sounds of children streaming in and out of red brick tenements.