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" I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head. "
Walter Dean Myers
Never
Live
Head
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" 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
Understand
World
America
" I couldn't speak well. I went to speech therapy for 10 years. And I was sort of frustrated in that sense. "
Walter Dean Myers
Sense
Speech
Therapy
" Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
You
Me
" 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. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
Giving
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" One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict. "
Walter Dean Myers
Vietnam
Negative
Living
" 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
" 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
Time
Own
My Own
" 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
" I read a lot of comic books and any kind of thing I could find. One day, a teacher found me. She grabbed my comic book and tore it up. I was really upset, but then she brought in a pile of books from her own library. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. "
Walter Dean Myers
Best
Day
Teacher
" 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
" 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. "
Walter Dean Myers
Love
Good
Day
" 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
Church
Place
Find
" There is a crisis involving reading in certain communities. "
Walter Dean Myers
Crisis
Certain
Reading
" There have been two areas identified as being vital to reading - and that's for very young children between the ages of one month and five years and for teenagers. I've been trying to find ways of approaching both groups. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
Trying
Young
" New York is my favorite city. "
Walter Dean Myers
New York
New
City
" 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
" 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 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
" Each generation seems to invent its own reasons for war. "
Walter Dean Myers
Reasons
Own
Generation
" 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
War
Romantic
Poetry
" 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
" To fight for one's country, to offer one's very life to promote the well being of the United States, is truly a noble undertaking. But so is the vigilance of the citizen who carefully examines our leaders to see if political problems are being solved by wars simply because this seems to be the easiest solution. "
Walter Dean Myers
Fight
Problems
Political
" 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
War
Angels
Death
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional. "
Walter Dean Myers
Need
Kids
Flat
" 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