Quotes by Walter Mosley

We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.

If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You dont go to a well once but daily. You dont skip a childs breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning...

It hurts when theyre gone. And it doesnt matter if its slow or fast, whether its a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When theyre gone the world turns upside down and youre left holding on, trying not to fall off.

The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.

Ive always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.” – Associated Press interview, 12-7-11

I understood about fear. And I knew better than anyone in that room what Mouse was capable of. But still I had been raised in a place where to show your fear was worse than cowardice. It was suicide, a sin.

You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a woman in America in 1910, if you don’t write that she can’t really control her property, that she can’t—doesn’t have any say over her children, that she can’t vote—if you don’t put that in it, then it’s a fantasy. Like, well, how is her life informed? That’s true about everybody. If you write about black people, you write about white men, I mean, it has to be political. A lot of people don’t realize that, it seems.

Chirren is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two.

A mans bookcase will tell you everything youll ever need to know about him.

These short stories are vast structures existing mostly in the subconscious of our cultural history. They will live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. Thats because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs. A good short story asks a question that cant be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything.

Blood may be thicker than water, but family has them both beat.

Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where Id heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than wed like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.

Mrs. Turner gripped my baby finger.Its amazing how a man can feel sex anywhere on his body.

We born dyin...But you ask a man an he talk like he gonna live forevah.

The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.

I think that the power over death and life is the greatest strength that any person can have. It trumps sex and wealth. If Im willing to die no one can master me.

Its like a door open at the side of the house and this cool breeze is blowing in over the back of my neck. The breeze is Death whispering and that door is open for me to go through anytime I want. And I want to go through. I want the confusion to stop--no, not only confusion but pain too.

I destroyed that doll, hoping the sacrifice would somehow reverse time and bring my father back. I was a mad scientist and an angry child.

Thats how powerful you are, girl...You pretty, but pretty alone is not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, thats like a mirror. Men and women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they cant bear to see you go.