Alice Walker Quotes

Sometimes you can do the work in the moment, and you don't know whether it's going to really have meaning once time has elapsed.

Whether you reach a lot of people or have a profound impact on a few people, their memories of you are your afterlife.

To have influence, you really don't need to have power. But what you need more than anything else is to have that almost uncanny understanding of what matters to people.

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

When you see all of these bands citing you as influences, it makes you feel relevant.

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.

And when I play they know I exist, and it leaves a space when I go.

I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people.

An artist who doesn't have any audience is not an artist.

They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers-people who do not know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.

Another thing I like to say to my students is this: "How many Corinthians read Paul's letters?" The answer is none. They couldn't have cared less! There aren't even any Corinthians left, but Paul's letters persist. Paul was not a professional writer. He was called to something, and he sent his letters. That's a good way to look at it. That you might be making something that nobody cares about, but you have to do it. It's not that people should care, but that you should care.

Every time I make something I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it.

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion. Some piece of ourselves, not necessarily our consciousness, but some piece of ourselves gets passed on and on and on.

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives.

I don't think where people come from is that important. It doesn't matter if you come from reality TV. The question is whether you can inspire people.

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

Connect, create meaning, make a difference, matter, be missed.

We persist and linger longer than we think, leaving traces of ourselves wherever we go. If you take that away, then we all simply vanish.

Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.

Art is about people. I think the discussion about whether architecture is art or not is lamebrain.

We aren't the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.

People seemed to think, you get to a certain age or you get married or you, you're comfortable. And so now there's nothing to write about: that angst is gone. The youthful angst. And that just hasn't happened with me.

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life's fabric, to the world's beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!

Everything that creative people think and do is from the heart.