Alice Walker is a contemporary writer and poet born in 1946. Her most widely known work was the acclaimed "The Color Purple" which won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Alice Walker was the last of 8th children born to a poor sharecropper and his wife in Eatonton Georgia in 1946. Alice Walker was educated despite the odds against her in those days of separate and unequal facilities and the tendency to devalue all women but especially those of color.

Alice Walker has registered her views on many subjects and yet the body of her work speaks to the plight of black women in a world where a black woman struggles against dual oppressions, that of discrimination and hate of African Americans by whites and that of oppression from males both black and white.

Alice Walker quotes cover topics as earthy and practical as love, friendship, the value of self worth, literary critics and more, and as an author her words tend to be inspirational, self confirming. Her quotes are often full of earthy good sense which she inherited and devotedly searched for in the life of her mother and other women of color who helped form the culture inherited by black women today. Contained herein are the top 5 Alice Walker quotes, speaking on love, marriage, friendship and the value of women and above all self empowerment.

"In search of my mother's garden I found my own"

While attempting to interpret the meaning behind any author's words is a risky business often best left to critics, the Alice Walker quote "In search of my mother's garden I found my own", tends to clarify her view on her mother, and those women of color who paved the way for all the women after. Alice Walker has demonstrated a reverence for the earthy wisdom and nurturing nature of women, particularly her mother, in all of her published works.

"Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence."

Alice Walker was born and educated during a tumultuous and sometimes violent upheaval for African Americans in the United States. She was an activist during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and interrupted her studies at University to become an active part of this movement. She has remained outspoken on matters of racial prejudice and hate and in fact her most widely acclaimed novel "The Color Purple" was written from the viewpoint of a young black woman facing oppression in rural Georgia during the 1930s.

"The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account."

Alice Walker has been accused at times of championing unpopular or radical causes merely as a matter of principle. However, her early life may account for this quote since an accident with her brother's BB gun robbed her of the sight of one eye when she was young. Because her parents had no access to a car by the time she was able to see a doctor, an unsightly cataract had grown over the eye. This caused this shy and sensitive young black girl to become more withdrawn and perhaps strongly influenced much of her later growth both as a young woman and as a writer.

"I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to."

Alice Walker's works have focused upon the similarities of people as well as the discrimination and hate crimes so common during her formative years. She has often been quoted as championing the cause of viewing people as just that, people. In fact she was married and amicably divorced to renowned Jewish civil rights attorney Melvyn Roseman Leventhal. The couple later moved to Mississippi and became the first legally married interracial couple in the state.

"Activism is my rent for living on the planet."

While there is no denying that Alice Walker was and remains an activist and a champion of the causes affecting women and blacks she also abhors violence. In a time of upheaval when blows were exchanged, and violence was common in the name of change she turned to words. Her words as pointed and sharp as any sword, but nurturing in the way of women since time immemorial help. Her activism has seemed to uplift a nation's black women and change their fates by changing their perception of themselves and their cultural heritage.

Wadzanai Nenzou Is A Writer And Owner Of Inspirational Quotes Change Lives Website. She Loves Learning About Accomplished People. For More On Alice Walker Go To Her Inspirational Quotes Website http://www.inspirational-quotes-change-lives.com/.