Alice Walker Quotes

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don't kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

It was like falling off a building and suddenly, bang, you hit the bottom. The first time it happened was on an ordinary day at home. I was taking down some curtains. I took one step, turned around, took another step and then I fell and hit my head hard on the rowing machine.

I don't really know how strong someone is if they're compelled to a life of violence. Is that strong? No. That's damaged.

Knocking someone out cold means you just caught them, that's all.

I'm 5 foot, 3 inches. Even if I hit you, I'm probably not going to knock you down.

Sometimes you get hit on the nose and nothing happens, then you get hit and something breaks.

You know I could get hit with a baseball bat and it don't mean nothing.

A prizefighter who gets knocked out or is badly outclassed suffers in a way he will never forget.

You're not weak at all. Wounded, but that's nothing to be ashamed of.

It took a long time for me to walk. I was falling down all the time. But I ended up being one of the dangerous men, who broke so many people's noses, which is bad.

The hearts that never lean must fall.

you never forget your first fall.

I got hit in the face with a gun. I'm not very fragile at all. It makes me think maybe things would be easier if I were terribly frail and fragile somehow.

we might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. he is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.

Even if I had expected it, even if I had known what I was going to do with my life, it would have knocked the wind out of me. When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you- not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?

The gun goes off. I fall.

But in my heart I knew that just like the new grass, I wasn't strong enough yet to be walked on

Hey I bruise," Hale said. "Also, you are freakishly strong.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

A man falls down a flight of stairs and somebody rushes over to him and asks, Did you miss a step? No, he answers, I hit every one of them!

Don't ever let anybody know you're injured.

My back is so scar-tissued that you couldn't find a place to slip a knife.

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work-- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside-- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within-that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.

For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.

This wasn't the way I had imagined my adventures, but reality ignored my wishes from the get-go, giving me a body best suited for stacking books in the library, injecting so much fear into my veins that I could only cower in the stairwell when the violence came. Maybe someday my arms and legs would thicken with muscle and the fear would drain away like dirty bathwater. I wish I believed these things would happen, but I didn't.