Quotes from Alice Walker

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

His little whistle sound like it lost way down a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek. P. 64

I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in someways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed- is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them...

It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period

But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain

If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.

Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand she make it look like a weapon.

Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.

Well, sometime Mr —— git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways. You ought to bash Mr —— head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.

The only way to solace anyone who loved you in life is to be a good memory

You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself. I don't say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don't fight, I stay where I'm told. But I'm alive.

He beat me like he beat the children. Cept he don't never hardly beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how come I know trees fear man.

And I don't believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I'll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will you be.

We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, an d out of self is what us have to hand

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.

I wish I could be traveling with her, but thank God she able to do it. Sometimes I feel mad at her. Feel like I could scratch her hair right off her head. But then I think, Shug got a right to live too. She got a right to look over the world in whatever company she choose. Just cause I love her don't take away none of her rights.

If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Helped are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth. -----"The Gospel According to Shug

I can't fix my mouth to say how I feel.

Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

My heart hurt so much I can't believe it. How can it keep beating, feeling like this?