Quotes from Alice Walker

THEY CANNOT KILL US, BECAUSE WITHOUT US THEY DIE.

En toda mi vida, nunca me ha preocupado lo que la gente pensara de mí, le digo. Pero, en el fondo de mi corazón, me preocupaba mucho lo que pensara Dios. Y ahora veo que no piensa. Sólo está allí sentado, tan contento de ser sordo. Pero no creas que es fácil tratar de pasar sin Dios. Aunque una sepa que no existe, es duro darle la espalda.

Pretty soon it feel like I can't think. My mind run up on a thought, git confuse, run back and sort of lay down.

I am beginning to comprehend the mystery of the gift of suffering. It is true as some have said that it is a crucible in which the gold of one's spirit is rendered and shines.

I'm afraid, my dear, we were radiant.

She say, I love you, Miss Celie. And then she haul off and kiss me on the mouth. Um, she say, like she surprise. I kiss her back, say, um, too. Us kiss and kiss till us can't hardly kiss no more. Then us touch each other. I don't know nothing bout it, I say to Shug. I don't know much, she say. Then I feels something real soft and wet on my breast, feel like one of my little lost babies mouth. Way after while, I act like a little lost baby too.

RESISTANCE IS THE SECRET OF JOY! it says in huge block letters.

They had the look of people deliberately distancing themselves from the center of things, as their own cultures defined it. Seeking the edge, the fringe. But also, paradoxically, the heart.

Leute mit Krawatten an sehn aus, wie wenn sie gelyncht werden.

Because you are who you are, the future look happy and bright.

In an oppressive society it may well be that *all* fantasies indulged in by the oppressor are destructive to the oppressed. To become involved in them in any way at all is, at the very least, to lose time defining yourself. To isolate the fantasy we must cleave to reality, to what *we* know, *we* feel, *we* think of life. Trusting our own experience and our own lives; embracing both the dark self and the light.

The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white.

I guess this is because they teach me, and I teach the children and there's no beginning or end to teaching and learning and working—it all runs together.

whenever you go someplace, you meet it, as if it were alive, which of course it is.

Ain't no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. You mad cause he don't seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to anything colored say? Ask Sofia, she say. But I don't have to ast Sofia. I know white people never listen to colored, period. If they do, they only listen long enough to be able. to tell you what to do.

She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what.

You are always moving toward your fate, in life.

They had a lot of love to give. But I needed love plus understanding. They run a little short of that.

We will fight the white man, they said. But the white man is not alone, said the chief. He has brought his army.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

Only the sky above us do we hold in common.

We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and our own self is what us have to hand.

I would have thought that a book that begins "Dear God" would immediately have been identified as a book about the desire to encounter, to hear from, the Ultimate Ancestor. Perhaps it is a sign of our times that this was infrequently the case.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.