Alice Childress Quotes

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

dear little baby of the folks I work for, I got a present for you .. my whole damn life! I'm handin' it over to you & your ma & pa. if you got no money to pay, I wanna stay anyhow, my pleasure is to wait on you forever. to hell with my children & hooray for you!.. you stayin' up all night fixin' up Character Parts for me! givin' 'em what you call dignity! dignity! you know what your dignity is? a black straw hat with a flower stickin' up in front, hands folded cross my stomach, sayin' the same damn fool things .. only nice & easy & proper!" --trouble in mind (1955)

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

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

Schoolteachers can be some hard-eyed people, with talkin eyes; they mouth sayin one thing and them eyes be screamin another.

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

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

The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it.

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

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!

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.

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

A woman need a man to claim, even if it's a dead one.

That's sin, [...] leavin' on a lie.

One day I almost said it . . . after goin over the words in my mind, "Benjie, the greatest thing in the world is to love someone and they love you too." But when I opened my mouth, I said, "Benjie, brush the crumbs off your jacket.

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.

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

But if we grow stronger...and rise higher than what's pullin' us down...Yes, rise higher than dirt...that fifty pound weight will lift and you'll be free, free without anybody's by-your-leave. Do something to wash out the sin.

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

Don't it give you the goose pimples when you realize that white people can kill us and get away with it? Just think of it! We are walkin' targets everywhere we go - on the subway, in the street, everywhere.

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

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

Gawd might forgive but people never will.

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.

Two things a man can give the woman he loves...his name and his protection...