Alice Walker - The Color Purple (1982)

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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.

Alice Walker
Just because I don't harass it like some peoples us know don't mean I ain't got religion.

Alice Walker
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.

Alice Walker
I know what I'm thinking bout, I think. Nothing. And as much of it as I can.

Alice Walker
If a mule could tell folks how it's treated, it would.

Alice Walker
But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

Alice Walker
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.

Alice Walker
Ain't no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest.

Alice Walker
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

Alice Walker
Somewhere in the bible it say Jesus' hair was like lamb's wool, I say. Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he'd have to have it conked before anybody paid him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about they God is that his hair kinky.

Alice Walker
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.

Alice Walker
The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.

Alice Walker
We know a roofleaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?

Alice Walker
I think Africans are very much like white people back home, in that they think they are the center of the universe and that everything that is done is done for them.

Alice Walker
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?

Alice Walker
Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

Alice Walker
I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting 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, he say, the more I love.

Alice Walker
Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.

Alice Walker
They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. But if yellow is a name Why ain't black the same. Well, if I say Hey black girl Lord, she try to ruin my game.

Alice Walker
I don't know how to fight. All I know is how to stay alive.

Alice Walker
I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

Alice Walker
Well, sometime Mr —— git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways. You ought to bash Mr —— head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.

Alice Walker
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.

Alice Walker
You know a little drink now and then never hurt nobody, but when you can't git started without asking the bottle, you in trouble.

Alice Walker
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. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think.... Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It.

Alice Walker
The little I knew about my own self wouldn't have filled a thimble!

Alice Walker
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

Alice Walker
You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself. I don't say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don't fight, I stay where I'm told. But I'm alive.

Alice Walker
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

Alice Walker
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.

Alice Walker