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.

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

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

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.

The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it.

Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe.

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.

I think women need kindness more than love. When one human being is kind to another, it's a very deep matter.

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

Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice.

Some truth has no nourishment in it.

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

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

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

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

Thoughts can hurt like real pain.

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

your soul is an inner something that is another you and hardly anybody knows what it's really thinkin' except you.

A gift - be it a present, a kind word or a job done with care and love - explains itself!... and if receivin' it embarrasses you, it's because your 'thanks box' is warped.

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

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

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

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

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

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.