Kathryn Stockett’s “The Help” Quotes (66 Quotes)

Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.

I nursed a worthless, pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life-sucking, daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears in my eyes I'd never marry one. And then I did.

Mrs. Charlotte Phelan's Guide to Husband-Hunting, Rule Number One: a pretty, petite girl should accentuate with makeup and good posture. A tall plain one, with a trust fund.

This woman talk like she from so deep in the country she got corn growing in her shoes.

For four days straights, I sit at my typewriter in my bedroom. Twenty of my typed pages, full of slashes and red-circled edits, become thirty-one in thick Strathmore white.

I set her on her wooden baby seat so her little hiney don't fall in and soon as I turn my back, she off that pot running.

No one tells us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens.

Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.

Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.

I tell myself that's what you get when you put thirty-one toilets on the most popular girl's front yard. People tend to treat you a little differently than before.

Only three things them ladies talk about: they kids, they clothes, and they friends. I hear the word Kennedy, I know they ain't discussing no politic. They talking about what Miss Jackie done wore on the tee-vee.

We must keep this a perfect secret.

Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.

I tucked this away, afraid to admit how good it was to hear it.

President Kennedy's assassination, less than two weeks ago, has struck the world dumb. It's like no one wants to be the first to break the silence. Nothing seems important.

Week after Clyde left you I heard that Cocoa wake up to her cootchie spoilt like a rotten oyster. Didn't get better for three months. Bertrina she good friends with Cocoa She knows your prayer works.

He let out a long sorry sigh and I love that look on his face, that disappointment. I understand now why girls resist,just for that sweet look of regret....

I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality...

Rouva Charlotte Phelanin opas aviomiehenmetsästykseen, sääntö numero yksi: pienikokoinen, sievä tyttö korostakoon viehätysvoimaansa meikillä ja hyvällä ryhdillä. Pitkä ja ruma omalla rahastolla.

Why don't we just build you an house outside Hilly?

He moves closer and leans down so I will look at him. And I feel sick, literally nauseated by the smell of bourbon on his breath. And yet I still want to fold myself up and put my entire body in his arms. I am loving him and hating him at the same time.

I wash my hands, wonder how an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you'd just run out of awful.

Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody's business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady's problems, you don't go crying to her with yours-you can't pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don't want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me?

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends

Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.

I'd cry, if only I had the time to do it.

She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don't hate much in life, but me and that dress is not on good terms.

Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.

All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries.

I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.

I'm sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?

She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it.

You got nothing left here but enemies in the Junior League and a mama that's gonna drive you to drink. You done burned ever bridge there is. And you ain't never gone get another boyfriend in this town and everbody know it. So don't walk your white butt to New York, run it.

And I knew she ain't saying what she want a say either and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.

I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month's worth a light bill for. I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.

In the dark, I get a glimpse of myself from way above, like in a movie. I've become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town's Boo Radley, just like in To Kill a Mockingbird

She's got so many azalea bushes, her yard's going to look like Gone With the Wind come spring. I don't like azaleas and I sure didn't like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party. If I'd played Mammy, I'd of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Maker her own damn man-catching dress.

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.

I give in and light another cigarette even though last night the surgeon general came on the television set and shook his finger at everybody, trying to convince us that smoking will kill us. But Mother once told me tongue kissing would turn me blind and I'm starting to think it's all just a big plot between the surgeon general and Mother to make sure no one ever has any fun.

It seems like at some point you'd run out of awful.

Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.

Bosoms are for bedrooms and breastfeeding.

I hear Raleigh's new accounting business isn't doing well. Maybe up in New York or somewhere it's a good thing, but in Jackson, Mississippi, people just don't care to do business with a rude, condescending asshole.

It weren't too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn't feel so, accepting, anymore.

Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.

Bosoms, are for bedrooms and breastfeeding. Not for occasions with dignity.

I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.

It's already 95 degrees outside. Mississippi got the most unorganized weather in the nation.

That was the day my whole world went black. Air looked black. Sun looked black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls of my house….Took three months before I even looked out the window, see the world still there. I was surprised to see the world didn't stop.