1. “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.”
2. “Hard times” is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa’s hard times were made harder by them.”
3. “If you was my wife, she say, I’d cover you up with kisses stead of licks, and work hard for you too.”
4. “We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, an d out of self is what us have to hand.”
5. “Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind.”
6. “Here us is, I thought, two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars.”
7. “I know what I’m thinking bout, I think. Nothing. And as much of it as I can.”
8. “If you know your heart sorry, I say, that mean it not quite as spoilt as you think.”
9. “My heart hurt so much I can’t believe it. How can it keep beating, feeling like this? But I’m a woman. I love you, I say. Whatever happen, whatever you do, I love you.”
10. “Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream about will fail.”
11. “…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.”
12. “There is so much we don’t understand. And so much unhappiness comes because of that.”
13. “There’s something in all of us that wants a medal for what we have done. That wants to be appreciated.”
14. “Just cause I love her don’t take away none of her rights.”
15. “Wherever there’s a man, there’s trouble.”
16. “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.”
17. “Who am I to tell her who to love? My job just to love her good and true myself.
18. “His little whistle sound like it lost way down a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek.
19. “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.”
20. “he never says anything off the top of his head”
21. “But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.”
22. “Every stitch i sew will be a kiss.”
23. “I wish you were with me, or I with you.”
24. “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
25. “I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.”
26. “Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?”
27. “He strong in body but weak in will.”
28. “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.”
29. “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.”
30. “When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest.”
31. “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.”
32. “A grown child is a dangerous thing.”
33. “I wish I could be traveling with her, but thank God she able to do it. Sometimes I feel mad at her. Feel like I could scratch her hair right off her head. But then I think, Shug got a right to live too. She got a right to look over the world in whatever company she choose. Just cause I love her don’t take away none of her rights.”
34. “Only the sky above us do we hold in common. I look at it often as if, somehow, reflected from its immensities, I will one day find myself gazing into your eyes.”
35. “She look like she ain’t long for this world but dressed well for the next.”
36. “Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.”
37. “This life soon be over … Heaven last always”
38. “You’d be surprised how good writing matters when you’re going after money.”
39. “Can anything be more boring than an upper-class Englishman?”
40. “The Lord don’t like ugly, she say. And he ain’t stuck on pretty.”
41. “I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.”
42. “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.”
43. “Let ’im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.”
44. “One good thing bout the way he never do any work round the place, us never miss him when he gone.”
45. “If she come, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content.”
46. “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.”
47. “Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.”
48. “If he [God] ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.”
49. “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice said to everything listening. But I’m here.”
50. “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”
51. “I say it cause I’m a fool,’ I say. ‘I say it cause I’m jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can’t.”
52. “And I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can’t have.”
53. “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.”
54. “And I thank God let me gain understanding enough to know love can’t be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan. Just cause I love her don’t take away none of her rights.”
55. “I sit here in this big house by myself trying to sew, but what good is sewing on do? What good is anything? being alive begin to seem like a awful strain.”
56. “It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.”
57. “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.”
58. “The more I wonder, the more I love.”
59. “Time moves slowly, but passes quickly”
60. “Like I said…fine with me.”
61. “The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.”
62. “But I am not the mother of anybody’s children, I said, and I am something”
63. “The dirt say, Anything you do to me, already done to you.”
64. “You better not never tell nobody but god.”
65. “Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.”
66. “And I couldn’t understand why us have life at all if all it can do most times is make us feel bad.”
67. “a very sensitive soul who hears what isn’t said as clearly as what is.”
68. “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 care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
69. “More than anything else, God love admiration … wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God odd if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
70. “I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That’s how come I know trees fear man.”
71. “Young womens no good these days, he say. Got they legs open to every Tom, Dick and Harry.”
72. “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is.”
73. “Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.”
74. “I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can’t have.”
75. “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.”
76. “unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.”
77. “She looks like a wet cat.”
78. “There’s 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.”
79. “If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.”