The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something.What can she...
Standing beside the river, realizing that the water of earth is recycled forever, she deeply understood this: that there are two presents. One is of the moment. The other is of a longer moment - the m...
Some people don't understand that it is the nature of the eye to have seen forever, and the nature of the mind to recall anything that was ever known.
Shug: More than anything God love admiration.Celie: You saying God is vain?Shug: No, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off when you walk by the colour purple in a fie...
She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, bur...
She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that no is a word the world never learned to say to her.
She sicker than my mama was when she die. But she more evil than my mama and that keep her alive.
She say to Sofia, All your children so clean, she say, would you like to work for me, be my maid? Sofia say, Hell no. She say, What you say? Sofia say, Hell no.
She can have them, Mama, she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her.
Religion is an elaborate excuse for what man has done to women and to the earth
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.
Part of what existence means to me is knowing the difference between what I am now and what I was then. It is being capable of looking after myself intellectually as well as financially. It is being a...
Oh, she say. God loves all them feelings. That's some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves 'em you enjoys 'em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that's going, and pra...
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...
I love children say Sofia. But all the colored women that say they love yours is lying. They don't love Reynolds Stanley any more than I do. But if you so badly raise as to ast 'em, what you expect th...
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 kn...
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.
His little whistle sound like it lost way down a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek. P. 64
Helped are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth.-----The Gospel According to Shug
Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.