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" I talk to myself out loud at times, and feel embarrassed when people overhear me. "

Walter Dean Myers

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" 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

" As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament. "

Walter Dean Myers

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Walter Dean Myers

" And I see the - you know, when I go to the juvenile detention centers and prisons, I see people who can't read now. And I know that when they leave those prisons and those detention centers, they're not going to be able to make it in our society. "

Walter Dean Myers

" 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

" I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings. "

Walter Dean Myers

" With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about. "

Walter Dean Myers

" From my foster parents, the Deans, I received the love that was ultimately to strengthen me, even when I had forgotten its source. It was my foster mother, a half-Indian, half-German woman, who taught me to read, though she herself was barely literate. I remember her reading to me every day from 'True Romance' magazine. "

Walter Dean Myers

" We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional. "

Walter Dean Myers

" One of the problems is that kids who don't read - who are not doing well in school - they know they're not doing well. And they want everyone to be in that same category. "

Walter Dean Myers

" I admired the work ethic of the cowboys I read about. The idea of these young people taking on this much responsibility was impressive. I would like modern readers to have an appreciation of this. "

Walter Dean Myers

" My younger brother's death in Vietnam was both sobering and cause for reflection. In 'Fallen Angels' I wanted to dispel the notion of war as either romantic or simplistically heroic. "

Walter Dean Myers

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head. "

Walter Dean Myers

" 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

" America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true. "

Walter Dean Myers

" Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have to sit in the Colored balcony. "

Walter Dean Myers

" 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

" I don't want to approach reading from the viewpoint of that it's a pleasant adjunct to your life. I want to approach it from the idea that you have to read or you're going to suffer. There's a difference to be made - and you can make it if you read with your child. "

Walter Dean Myers

" 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

" 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

" I wrote for magazines. I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the 'National Enquirer,' I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries. "

Walter Dean Myers

" 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

" 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