Alice Childress Quotes

“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave - and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.”

— Alice Childress

“Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvelously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne.”

— Alice Childress

I believe racism has killed more people than speed, heroin, or cancer, and will continue to kill until it is no more.

— Alice Childress

Some feminists feel that a woman should never be wrong. We have a right to be wrong.

— Alice Childress

“Thoughts can hurt like real pain.”

— Alice Childress

“Zis and zat' when uttered by the French is considered charming, but 'dis and dat' as an Africanism is ridiculed as gross and ugly.”

— Alice Childress

“Writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.”

— Alice Childress

“We think of poverty as a condition simply meaning a lack of funds, no money, but when one sees fifth, sixth, and seventh generation poor, it is clear that poverty is as complicated as high finance.”

— Alice Childress

“Writers are encouraged to "keep 'em laughing" and complain "with good humor" in order to "win" allies. The joke is always on ourselves.”

— Alice Childress

“Everybody's got some sin, but if it troubles your heart you're a gentle sinner, just a good soul gone wrong.”

— Alice Childress

“The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it.”

— Alice Childress

“Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe.”

— Alice Childress

That's how women are, always studyin' each other and wonderin' how they look up 'gainst the next.

— Alice Childress

And realizing there is no such thing as the Black experience. Time and events allow for change on both sides.

— Alice Childress

“I was so mad you could have boiled a pot of water on my head.”

— Alice Childress

“It's a poor kind of man that won't fight for his own freedom.”

— Alice Childress

“Where did we get the idea of insultin' folks by pointin' out their age? ... It seems that we think youth is some special accomplishment brought about by the individual himself!”

— Alice Childress

“"The good old days." The only good days are ahead.”

— Alice Childress

“I am lonesome so regular it's like a job I gotta report to every day.”

— Alice Childress

“Who wants to live with one foot in hell just for the sake of nostalgia Our time is forever now.”

— Alice Childress

“It becomes almost second nature to be on guard against the creative pattern of our own thought.”

— Alice Childress

“The twisted circumstances under which we live is grist for the writing mill, the loving, hating and discovering, finding new handles for old pitchers ...”

— Alice Childress

“I'm independent as a hog on ice and a hog on ice is dead, cold, well-preserved and don't need a mother'grabbin, thing.”

— Alice Childress

Some truth has no nourishment in it.

— Alice Childress