Quotes by Alice Walker

Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

You think you can avoid [pain,] but you actually cant. If you do, you just get sicker, or you feel more pain. But if you can speak it, if you can write it, if you can paint it, it is very healing.

What the mind doesnt understand, it worships or fears.

Hope to sin only in the service of waking up.

Once us feel loved by God, us do the best us can to please him with what us like.

What she showed me was, Yes, I am Grandmother as she is; there is no separation, really, between us. And that, on this planet, Grandmother Earth, there is no higher authority. That our inseparability is why the planet will be steered to safety by Grandmother/Grandmothers or it will not be steered to safety at all.

You telling me God love you, and you aint never done nothing for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that?But if God love me, Celie, I dont have to do all that. Unless I want to. Theres a lot of other things I can do that I speck God likes. Like what? I ast. Oh, she say. I can lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time. Well, this sounds like blasphemy sure nuff. She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.

He beat me when you not here, I say.Who do, she say, Albert?Mr ____, I say.I cant believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop.What he beat you for? she ast.For being me and not you.

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

I believe that the truth of any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together.

When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.

The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level from second grade to third. With simplifying history and writing it down (or reciting it) for the old folks. With helping illiterates fill out a food-stamps form - for they must eat, revolution or not.

Then he say something that really surprise me cause it so thoughtful and common sense. When it come to what folks do together with they bodies, he say, anybodys guess is as good as mine. But when you talk about love I dont have to guess. I have love and I have been love. And I thank God he let me gain understanding enough to know love cant be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan.

It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. Thats how I come to know trees fear man.

Hard times is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africas hard times were made harder by them.

First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man

She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it

It didnt take long to realize I didnt hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it dont mean nothing if you dont ast why you here, period

The crushed teapot in the rubbish of the bulldozed house will sing in your ears forever.

The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.Our women are respected here, said the father. We would never let them tramp the world as American women do. There is always someone to look after the Olinka woman. A father. An uncle. A brother or nephew. Do not be offended, Sister Nettie, but our people pity women such as you who are cast out, we know not from where, into a world unknown to you, where you must struggle all alone, for yourself.So I am an object of pity and contempt, I thought, to men and women alike.Furthermore, said Tashi’s father, we are not simpletons. We understand that there are places in the world where women live differently from the way our women do, but we do not approve of this different way for our children.But life is changing, even in Olinka, I said. We are here.He spat on the ground. What are you? Three grownups and two children. In the rainy season some of you will probably die. You people do not last long in our climate. If you do not die, you will be weakened by illness. Oh, yes. We have seen it all before. You Christians come here, try hard to change us, get sick and go back to England, or wherever you come from. Only the trader on the coast remains, and even he is not the same white man, year in and year out. We know because we send him women.Tashi is very intelligent, I said. She could be a teacher. A nurse. She could help the people in the village.There is no place here for a woman to do those things, he said.Then we should leave, I said. Sister Corrine and I.No, no, he said.Teach only the boys? I asked.Yes, he said, as if my question was agreement.There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground. The women also do not “look in a man’s face” as they say. To “look in a man’s face” is a brazen thing to do. They look instead at his feet or his knees.