Quotes from Alice Walker

They tried to explain to the missionaries that it was they who put Adam and Eve out of the village because they was naked. Their word for naked is white. But since they are covered by color they are not naked. They said anybody looking at a white person can tell naked, but black people can not be naked because they can not be white.

I believe that the truth about any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together, and all their different meanings make one new one. Each writer writes the missing parts to the other writer's story. And the whole story is what I'm after.

The reason I absolutely treasure literature is that it has taken me out of myself. Out of the narrow self, in which I could easily be stuck, and it has opened up the world to me. It has opened up the emotions of other people and their own aspirations and cares-Alice Walker

Tenían mucho cariño que repartir. Pero yo necesitaba cariño y tolerancia. Y de esto andaban escasos.

Can you handle it? ast Shug. How I'm gon keep from killing him, I say.

my friend comes. And cramps and aches and pains—but I must still keep going as if nothing is happening, or be an embarrassment

Don't let them run over you, Nettie say. You got to let them know who got the upper hand.

We love them. We try every way we can to show that love. But they reject us. They never even listen to how we've suffered. And if they listen they say stupid things. Why don't you speak our language? they ask. Why can't you remember the old ways? Why aren't you happy in America, if everyone there drives motorcars?

Happiness was just a trick in your case.

Keep in mind always the present you are constructing. It should be the future you want. —Ola

The colonizing mind invites itself wherever it wishes to intrude; it is a worthwhile practice for the coming millennium to train ourselves away from such a mind.

She is involved in work her soul must have.

It ain't bad, said Shug. But I just feel funny living in a square. If I was square, then I could take it better, she said.

Shug! I say. God wrote the bible, white folks had nothing to do with it. How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing one thing and another, and all the colored folks doing is gitting cursed? I never thought bout that.

People will laugh at us because that [voting] is not radical,' they said, choosing to believe that radicalism would grow over their souls, like a bright armor, overnight.

Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It.

It not nice to speak ill of the dead, one say, but the truth never can be ill.

God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.

You got to fight them, Celie,' she say. 'I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself.

Like Jesus, who didn't know who his biological father was either. I have often thought it was this lack of knowledge of his earthly father that led him to his 'heavenly' one, for there is in all of us a yearning to know our own source, and no source is likely to seem too farfetched to a lonely, fatherless child.

I look over at him too. For such a little man, he all puff up. Look like all he can do to stay in his chair.

You saying God vain? I ast. Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. What it do when it pissed off? I ast. Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

Questions be running back and forth through my mind. Feel like snakes.

She looks like a wet cat.