Alice Walker Quotes (73 Quotes)


    One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.


    She look me over from head to foot. Then she cackle. Sound like a death rattle. You sure is ugly, she say, like she ain't believed it.

    Ain't nothing wrong with Shug Avery. She just sick. Sicker than anybody I ever seen. She sicker than my mama was when she die. But she more evil than my mama and that keep her alive.



    All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.


    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




    First time I think about the world. What the world got to do with anything, I think. Then I see myself sitting there quilting tween Shug Avery and Mr --. Us three set together gainst Tobias and his fly speck box of chocolate. For the first time in my life, I feel just right.

    God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal. Most people think he has to look like something or someone- a roofleaf or Christ- but we don't. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.

    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.

    I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way...I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful...We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.

    I feel a little peculiar around the children. For one thing, they grown. And I see they think me and Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sofia and Jack and Odessa real old and don't know much what going on. But I don't think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.


    I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.

    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

    Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up the flowers, wind, water, a big rock.


    People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

    There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

    Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

    It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

    The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

    It seems our fate to be incorrect (look where we live, for example), and in our incorrectness stand.

    Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

    I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.

    In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

    And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

    All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

    No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

    Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

    For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

    Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

    The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

    To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

    They were women then My mama's generation Husky of voice Stout of step With fists as well as Hands How they battered down Doors And ironed Starched white Shirts How they led Armies Headragged Generals Across mined Fields Booby trapped

    The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.

    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.

    I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

    The creative mind is not a mind full of stuff.

    The original ''crime'' of ''niggers'' and lesbians is that they prefer themselves.

    It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's "mature" critics often are.

    I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

    The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.

    Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.

    God is inside you and inside everybody else. 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 for most folks be God ain't a he or a she, but a It.

    Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.


    More Alice Walker Quotations (Based on Topics)


    God - People - World - Man - Nature - Flowers - Children - Mothers - Fear - Beauty - Life - Woman - Mind - Society & Civilization - Art - Facts - Joy & Excitement - Cry - Happiness - View All Alice Walker Quotations

    More Alice Walker Quotations (By Book Titles)


    - The Color Purple

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