Mosley Quotes

Love makes you blind to your own survival. And if it doesn't then it's not love at all. ~ Walter Mosley

It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget. ~ Walter Mosley

I'm almost completely without family and it's a very odd feeling in life. I have no children. ~ Walter Mosley

He made me question what was, when for a whole lifetime up till that moment, I accepted the world's excuses. ~ Walter Mosley

Those who march with us will certainly face abuse, misunderstanding, bitter animosity, and possibly the ferocity of struggle and of danger. In return, we can only offer to them the deep belief that they are fighting that a great land may live. ~ Oswald Mosley

We have messed-up lives, but we're good people and we have grace. And even though we don't have to do good for God to love us, I want to do good for Him. ~ Lacey Mosley

Till we recognize what's sick and messed up about ourselves this world is gonna stay sick and messed up. ~ Lacey Sturm

Mouse was the truest friend I ever had. And if there is such a thing as true evil, he was that too. ~ Walter Mosley

Why does Mosley always speak as though he were a feudal landlord abusing tenants who are in arrears with their rent ? ~ Clement Attlee

Sure can. But you know a white man got to go through sumpin' 'fore he could call a black man friend. White man got to see the shit an' smell it too before he could really know a black friend." Jean-Paul ~ Walter Mosley

A man who is already insane was frightening enough, but when he goes crazy ... ~ Walter Mosley

All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature. ~ Walter Mosley

You have made Commerce a god that weighs on humanity like a twenty-four-pound boil on a man's back (117-118) ~ Walter Mosley

I think that it's important to try to keep reality. I think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez speaks a lot about reality in his magical realism. So I don't think we have to be hyper-realistic. But we have to understand the pressures that undergird the lives of the characters within that novel. ~ Walter Mosley

The nature of search engines is that they can make a major issue out of something small that no person would otherwise be able to find. ~ Max Mosley

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

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told. ~ Walter Mosley

Famously in 1936, Oswald Mosley led a march of his British black shirts through a mostly Jewish neighborhood, in the east end of London. What resulted was what they called the "Battle of Cable Street", where Oswald Mosley and his fascists basically got the snot beaten out of them when East London rose up against them and beat them up. ~ Rachel Maddow

Your book grows. The early part of your book is growing still while you are writing the later part of your book. ~ Walter Mosley

Trustin' a woman is like walkin' in California," Coydog would say. "You know there's bound to be a quake sometimes but you just keep on walkin' anyways. What else could you do? ~ Walter Mosley

I know how bad a thing it is to be a slave and I know how terrible it was but I don't believe that there's a free person in the whole world that knows how good a cup full of water can taste. Because you have to be a deprived slave, to be kept waiting for your water like we were to really appreciate how good just one swallow can be. When we finally got a drop on our tongues it was like something straight from the hands of the Almighty. ~ Walter Mosley

The conceit of literary intellectuals is to imagine that other people don't have ideas so that they can assume a superior status by having their own... ~ Nicholas Mosley

Any seed or insect or lizard or mammal that found itself in LA had to believe that there was a chance to thrive. Living in Southern California was like waking up in a children's book titled Would Be If I Could Be. ~ Walter Mosley

I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun. ~ Walter Mosley

I laugh, that there's a certain kind of cyclical nature to life and that I don't have to worry because whatever isn't there right now, it's coming back again. ~ Walter Mosley

A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk. ~ Oswald Mosley

I always tell people, if a young girl read "Beloved" as her first novel, she'd have to kill either herself or her mother, because in "Beloved" you have a mother killing their children. This is not something a child would accept very easily. And would never understand. ~ Walter Mosley

That's how powerful you are, girl ... You pretty, but pretty alone is not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, that's like a mirror. Men and women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can't bear to see you go. ~ Walter Mosley

Not for the first time in my life I had made it to the top. For some reason this made me hanker for a chili dog with chopped onions under a blanket of processed American cheese. ~ Walter Mosley

There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age. ~ Oswald Mosley

The law," he continued, "is made by the rich people so that the poor people can't get ahead ... ~ Walter Mosley

They want to hold on to you and your people. They have isolated the ones who might grow powerful and overthrow their debauched reign. ~ Walter Mosley

I hit him more times than necessary but by then my actions were mostly chemical, like a soldier ant or a teenager in love. ~ Walter Mosley

I inhaled deeply, feeling of two minds about the benefits and detriments of smoking. On one hand, tobacco robbed me of my wind, but on the other, it gave me something to do while the devil was tempting me! ~ Walter Mosley

Librarians are wonderful people, partly because they are, on the whole, unaware of how dangerous knowledge is. Karl Marx upended the political landscape of the twentieth century sitting at a library table. Still, modern librarians are more afraid of ingnorance than they are of the potential devastation that knowledge can bring. (p. 192) ~ Walter Mosley

I have never thought that I have sacrificed anything being a writer. That might not be true, maybe I have sacrificed something. Maybe I've given something up, but I can't think of it. ~ Walter Mosley

I don't think failure is to be overcome as much as it is to be learned from. ~ Karla Cheatham Mosley

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. ~ Walter Mosley

I've learned recently to love imperfection a lot because it shines such a big light on God's grace. And if someone has grace for you that's when you feel their love the most and they see you for who you are and they love you anyway. ~ Lacey Mosley

When you get old you begin to understand that no one talks unless someone listens, and no one knows nuthin' less somebody else can understand. ~ Walter Mosley

We have lost the good old British spirit. Instead we have American journalism and black-shirted buffoons making a cheap imitation of ice-cream sellers. ~ Oswald Mosley

The old axiom that 'all power corrupts' has doubtful validity, because it derives from our neglect of Plato 's advice to find men carefully and train them by methods which make them fit for heroes. ~ Oswald Mosley

People settle for so much less because they find their identities in the world's fickle and untrue opinions. God made you royal with His blood. Live. ~ Lacey Mosley

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

If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. ~ Walter Mosley

Als it is hard for America to fight wars in the name of freedom, if those people themselves choose for nonfreedom. Can America and England save India from communism, if they vote communist themselves. ~ Oswald Mosley

The most important lesson I've learned as a writer is that practice of the art is something I must exercise every day. The reason for this constant training is that any idea worth discovering is bigger than my head. The twists and turns, story and plot, characters and character development of a novel cannot be held in a single thought or even in a train of thought. This novel takes up a lot of space and needs room to breathe and evolve. ~ Walter Mosley

I think of writers as explorers, not necessarily as detectives. So there is certainly detecting that is going on, but they're explorers. ~ Walter Mosley

You know I really don't like to think about the fact that I'm a girl in relation to the music industry. I was just a kid who wrote down thoughts to organize her brain and that turned into music, like any other writer or musician ... so, I happen to be a girl. I don't consider that part of it really.. It may disappoint some feminists out there that I don't want to harp on women and men being equal. ~ Lacey Mosley

To spoon-feed people their comedy is not the proper evolution of the art. ~ Michael Mosley

My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8. ~ Walter Mosley

if I had only picked up a telephone and spoken my heart. ~ Walter Mosley

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. ~ Walter Mosley

To say a poem is absolute is saying nothing, because an ink blot can be absolute. Yet you put into it what you like. So it becomes totally relative. ~ Nicholas Mosley

If you want to write believable fiction, you will have to cross over the line of your self-restraint and revel in the words and ideas that you would never express in your everyday life. ~ Walter Mosley

We will be one step down from the Creator," she said, her olive-hued face tightening into an expression that she considered dramatic. "Imagining a world and then making it. ~ Walter Mosley

But I wasn't there to treat the incurable ills of megalomania. ~ Walter Mosley

But all of those things were possible back then even though nobody ~ Walter Mosley

Rest easy and go with the faith you lived with ~ Walter Mosley

We should teach our kids that they're blessing and not a burden and that they're valuable beyond what they can imagine - in God's eyes, in the world's eyes - that they're purpose is so important to fulfill and it's gonna make a difference in the world. And they're the only ones that can make the difference that they can make, in the way that they can make it. That's why we all have different fingerprints. And I feel like the message is not clear enough. It's not clear because they go to school and they get challenged and they're bombarded with the idea that abortion is okay, that we can just go ahead and, you know, if we're not ready to have a kid we can just take care of that problem. But kids are not a problem, they're not a mistake, they're not a burden. They're blessing from God and that's what we don't understand. My mom was sixteen when she had me and we both almost died, I was a second kid, she had my brother when she was fifteen. And we both almost died and the doctors told her to abort me and I think that a lot of people gave her that advice. So when I grew up I think I had a sense of being a burden. And I think a lot of kids actually have that sense. ~ Lacey Sturm

I don't give a fuck what you're trying to do or what you want. I'd send your ass away if you were a white man with a red ribbon tied around your dick. ~ Walter Mosley

The government isn't real," he replied. He might have been talking about Santa Claus or God. "I don't owe anything to anyone who in themselves are lies and liars. ~ Walter Mosley

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

After these three novels I gave up writing novels for a time; I was dissatisfied with romantic doom, yet didn't see much way around it. ~ Nicholas Mosley

The older you get the more you live in the past ~ Walter Mosley

Sometimes you might forget who you are and where, but that's okay because there's always somebody around that's happy to remind you. ~ Walter Mosley

The idea of being productive, the idea of producing many books is going to lead you toward you becoming a better and better writer. ~ Walter Mosley

I'm sorry he's dead but I am happier, by far, that he lived. ~ Walter Mosley

All of the philosophers I studied were white (with a few Eastern exceptions), and, for that matter, they were all male. Africa, the cradle of civilization, seemed to have no footing in the highest form of human thought. ~ Walter Mosley

I never really thought I'd be successful. I never though I'd get books published, but this was something completely beyond me. The fact that it happened is wonderful, but it is not something that I was aiming for. ~ Walter Mosley

I don't think I've ever read an old book through from start to finish. Not after more than six months after writing it, that is. ~ Nicholas Mosley

'Scrubs' has always had a very loyal fan base. When it started out, it was an explosion because it was after 'Friends,' but I think there have been times where it has peaked and valleyed. ~ Michael Mosley

Defend yourselves! If people don't defend their rights, they lose them. ~ Max Mosley

There is curiously little art concerning the efficacy of reason - perhaps simply because reason is not noticeably efficacious. ~ Nicholas Mosley

I've written a lot of really good books. Now we'll see if I can write any more good books. I mean there's a chance I won't, but I'm going to try. ~ Walter Mosley

You only get out of something what you bring into it, whether it is your job, your relationships, watching a movie, or reading a book. They all help you to get to know yourself better in some way. The more awareness we can bring into what we do, the less we will rush and miss the things we need to see about ourselves. ~ John D. Mosley

You see what kills your body but you don't see what kills your soul. ~ Lacey Mosley

Oster blender. I poured that concoction into a griddle of sizzling butter, then sprinkled diced strawberries on the wet side. Three ~ Walter Mosley

Don't test God and make some tests for him. That doesn't make any sense. Besides that he can do anything, above everything you could ask. He wants your heart to be real. He wants a volunteering lover. That's why he gives you a choice. He can tell a tree to grow and it will grow. But it's up to you to decide whether you obey him or not, he gave you a will. Even though he didn't give a tree a will, he gave you a will. And he says: "I want you to grow, will you grow? I want you to love me, will you love me? Like I love you, I love you so much." ~ Lacey Mosley

Being a winner is more than getting a first place trophy, it is acting like the effort was an honour and the trophy is just a decoration. ~ Bryan Mosley

In the sixth grade, I auditioned for a play called 'Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.' I got the lead, and I was terrified, but I went and did it. ~ Michael Mosley

A lot of people ... kind of make heroes that are separate from us, people who are, you know, like ... John Wayne and Errol Flynn and, you know, Denzel Washington ... people who are different, who are larger than life. ~ Walter Mosley

It connects with the theologians' point that you can say what God is not, but not (easily) what He is. ~ Nicholas Mosley

I think that people don't know how to do anything anymore. My father was a janitor. He could take a car apart and put it back together. He could build a house in the back yard. Today, if you ask people what they know, they say, 'I know how to hire someone. ~ Walter Mosley

I smiled and unraveled a plan that some strategic command at the back of my mind had been hatching while the woman in me made love to Rosetta Jeanette Lawson in the guise of a man. ~ Walter Mosley

The fact that we once knew each other in Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas, and that we were both still alive and ambulatory, was a miracle in itself. Where we came from he's dead was as common a phrase as he's sick or he's saved. People died in our world with appalling regularity. ~ Walter Mosley

The person who controls history controls their fate. The man who can tell you what happened, or did not happen, is lord and master of all he surveys. ~ Walter Mosley

After all, people are people. Many become friends with their coworkers. Many have worked with their coworkers at previous companies. ~ Eric Mosley

My hero in comic books is Jack Kirby: 'Spider-Man,' 'Fantastic Four,' 'Captain America,' Marvel Comics. He was really the basis for Marvel Comics. ~ Walter Mosley

It was a regular family scene. All we had to do was clean up a few murders and a matter of international dope smuggling, then we could move next door to Donna Reed. ~ Walter Mosley

There are times in your life when things line up and Fate takes a hand in your future," Ptolemy remembered Coydog saying. "When that happens, you got to move quick and take advantage of the sitchiation or you'll never know what might have been."
"How do I know when it's time to move quick?" L'il Pea asked.
"When somethin' big happens and then somethin' else come up. ~ Walter Mosley

That would be like me tellin' a gosling not to migrate down south his first mature season. You got to go. Got to. There's gonna be snakes and foxes, and in your case, [ ... ], there might even be men with guns. ~ 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. ~ Walter Mosley

The Glory is the issue to me. Money comes and goes, but a legacy stays forever. I hate to lose ~ Shane Mosley

Let me speak to your boss I said. Six magic words that roil deep in the bowels of anymore collecting a paycheck on a biweekly basis. It's like winking at a leprechaun: he has to give up his pot of gold, and yet no one knows why. ~ Walter Mosley

You can't fight with death, all you can do is stand your ground and hope that the foundation don't fall out from under you. ~ Walter Mosley

The biggest misconception that people have about the literary life is the romance of it. That a writer has this large world available to him or her of people, of ideas, of experiences, of interchange of ideas. ~ Walter Mosley

He said that a men's work cloths are the only real cloths he has. ~ Walter Mosley

Ultimately, for me, I had an underlying belief or fear that I'm not enough as I am. Sometimes I discover those kinds of thoughts still lurking in my subconscious, and the best thing I can do is show up anyway. ~ Karla Cheatham Mosley

Losing my parents really set me adrift in more ways than one. It's not just losing them. It's losing the possibility of family. ~ Walter Mosley