Alice Childress Quotations

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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.

Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice.

Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it.

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.

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

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

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

Some truth has no nourishment in it.

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

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.

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

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.

I continue to create because writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was God.

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