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" When my family fell apart, it was such a troubled part of my life... I think I could understand what I was going through, but I didn't have the vocabulary for it. "
Walter Dean Myers
My Life
Think
Understand
Related Quotes:
" With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about. "
Walter Dean Myers
Writing
People
Want
" 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
" As a child I wanted to be a professional athlete or lawyer. "
Walter Dean Myers
Athlete
Professional
Child
" 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
" 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
" Fifty percent of all meaningful education takes place in the home. What do you share with your child? You share your interests. I was a book person. I read with my son. My wife is an artist. She dragged his little butt around to museums. He's an illustrator of children's books. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
Education
Home
" I'll never live to write all the stories I have in my head. "
Walter Dean Myers
Never
Live
Head
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
Problems
School
Want
" 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
Like
Appreciation
Work
" 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
" 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
Child
You
Life
" 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
" 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
" 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
" There is a crisis involving reading in certain communities. "
Walter Dean Myers
Crisis
Certain
Reading
" 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
" 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
" I like people who take responsibility for their lives. "
Walter Dean Myers
Responsibility
People
Like
" I write in a small office at home. "
Walter Dean Myers
I Write
Home
Office
" 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 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
" 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
" We need to tell kids flat out: reading is not optional. "
Walter Dean Myers
Need
Kids
Flat
" 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 think it's difficult for young people to acknowledge being smart, to knowledge being a reader. I see kids who are embarrassed to read books. They're embarrassed to have people see them doing it. "
Walter Dean Myers
Doing
People
Knowledge
" Children have adopted a consumerist attitude - I dare you to entertain me. "
Walter Dean Myers
Children
You
Me
" 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