People don't understand how hard it is to get recognized, how hard it is to get people to read your books. How hard it is to get people to even to understand what they're reading when they're talking to you about their books. Walter Mosley More Quotes by Walter Mosley More Quotes From Walter Mosley Chirren [children] is the most dangerous creatures on the earth, with the exception of young girls between the ages of fifteen and forty-two. Walter Mosley girl two children 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 jobs looks world Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd 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 we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try. Walter Mosley mind trying thinking 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 adrift parent way Young people live exactly today... and they live in the immediacy of their world. And it's important for us, people from older generations to realize that a lot of our values, a lot of our truths are no longer truths, are no longer valuable. Walter Mosley generations important people My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo. Walter Mosley responsibility father art I believe that a writer has to tell what they think is the truth in a human experience. The truth of the human experience cannot escape the political. Walter Mosley political believe thinking 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 character reality thinking I'm writing, I'm using language, I'm using that language to tell stories and even more so to get ideas across. And I just love that, and I've always loved that. Walter Mosley stories writing ideas Writing is almost a place of dreams for me, and I don't have to give up anything to do it. Walter Mosley giving-up dream writing Readers no longer need novelists to tell us what it's like to cross the world on a ship or fight a war. In the twenty-first century, we get that information in other ways. The thing that's still a mystery to us is the human heart. What we want is to understand people, what they're doing, and why they're doing it. Walter Mosley fighting heart war 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 appreciation believe hands I'm almost completely without family and it's a very odd feeling in life. I have no children. Walter Mosley odd feelings children I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies. Walter Mosley asking-why views father When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember. Walter Mosley struggle remember trying I'm just a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world. Walter Mosley train-wrecks survivor world The police and I have a deal. I don't talk to them and they don't listen to me. Walter Mosley deals listen-to-me police 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 different hero people 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 males white civilization All writing is that structure of revelation. There's something you want to find out. If you know everything up front in the beginning, you really don't need to read further if there's nothing else to find out. Walter Mosley want writing needs
