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" Each generation seems to invent its own reasons for war. "
Walter Dean Myers
Reasons
Own
Generation
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
Hope
Reading
" I am very much interested in getting parents to read to children, and trying to get people mentoring children. If I can do both I'll be happy. "
Walter Dean Myers
Parents
Children
Happy
" I think that what we need to do is say, 'Reading is going to really affect your life.' You take a black man who doesn't have a job, but you say to him, 'Look, you can make a difference in your child's life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.' That's what I would like to do. "
Walter Dean Myers
Reading
Child
Day
" My dad was a janitor for U.S. Radium Corporation, and he stayed there for 37 years. So he didn't read. "
Walter Dean Myers
Years
Read
Janitor
" I live intimately with my characters before starting a book. I cut out pictures of them for my wall. I do time lines for each major character and a time line for the entire novel: What is going on in the world as my characters struggle with their problems? "
Walter Dean Myers
Book
Time
Struggle
" I want young people to be hesitant to glorify war and to demand of their leaders justification for the sacrifices they ask of our citizens. "
Walter Dean Myers
Young People
Young
War
" When we think of war, the tendency is to picture young soldiers only in their military roles. To a large extent this dehumanizes the soldiers and makes it easier for society to commit them to combat. "
Walter Dean Myers
Picture
War
Society
" Growing up in Harlem, I had the chance to practice with a Negro League team. At fifteen, I was over six feet tall and a fair athlete, but my skills didn't come close to some of the players I saw. "
Walter Dean Myers
Feet
Growing Up
Practice
" I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head. "
Walter Dean Myers
Never
Live
Head
" I didn't even know for years that people ever even got paid for this, because they don't teach you that in school. They don't say Shakespeare got a check. "
Walter Dean Myers
Teach
You
School
" We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional. "
Walter Dean Myers
Need
Kids
Flat
" I know what falling off the cliff means. I know from being considered a very bright kid to being considered like a moron and dropping out of school. "
Walter Dean Myers
Like
Bright
Falling
" 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. "
Walter Dean Myers
Me
Grace
Great
" 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. "
Walter Dean Myers
Black
Red
Sun
" If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable? "
Walter Dean Myers
My Life
Reflect
Gay
" There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative. "
Walter Dean Myers
Time
Negative
Looking
" What I found fascinating was just how quickly the best of the young Negro League players were drafted into the major leagues once Branch Rickey broke the color line by hiring Jackie Robinson. It was clear that all of the major league owners already knew the talents of the black ballplayers that they had refused to let into their league. "
Walter Dean Myers
Best
Young
Talents
" I remember one time being told I could not play in a basketball game at the College of William and Mary because I was black, even though I was playing with a United States Army team. "
Walter Dean Myers
College
Army
Team
" As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
Change
Man
" Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
You
Me
" There were two very distinct voices going on in my head and I moved easily between them. One had to do with sports, street life and establishing myself as a male... The other voice, the one I had from my street friends and teammates, was increasingly dealing with the vocabulary of literature. "
Walter Dean Myers
Sports
Myself
Friends
" I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train. "
Walter Dean Myers
Train
Start
Beginning
" Now, my mom did not read well and she read 'True Romance' magazines, but she read with me. And she would spend 30 minutes a day, her finger going along the page, and I learned to read. Eventually, by the time I was four and a half, she could iron and I could sit there and read the 'True Romance.' And that was wonderful. "
Walter Dean Myers
Me
Mom
She
" We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct. "
Walter Dean Myers
Know
Eat
Exercise
" I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott. "
Walter Dean Myers
Enjoy
Having
Would
" I began going to juvenile prisons. And some of these kids face some very, very tough lives. How do they handle these lives? Do they even know that if their life is bad, that they're still OK? Do they know that? Do they know that someone is thinking the same way that they're thinking? "
Walter Dean Myers
Know
Face
Thinking
" New York is my favorite city. "
Walter Dean Myers
New York
New
City
" The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena. "
Walter Dean Myers
Political
Life
War
" 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. "
Walter Dean Myers
Words
Writing
Good
" As a kid I didn't see black cowboys on the screen. What that said to me was that there were things I couldn't do or be because of my color. What we see others like us do gives us permission to expand our own horizons. "
Walter Dean Myers
Color
Black
See