"But what was good tween us must have been nothing but bodies, she say. Cause I don't know the Albert that don't dance, can't hardly laugh, never talk bout nothing, beat you and hid your sister Nettie's letters. Who he?"

"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."

"Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors."

"The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior."

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

"I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing."

"What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears."

"What she showed me was, Yes, I am Grandmother as she is; there is no separation, really, between us. And that, on this planet, Grandmother Earth, there is no higher authority. That our inseparability is why the planet will be steered to safety by Grandmother/Grandmothers or it will not be steered to safety at all."

"The three wealthiest people in the world own more than the GDP of forty-eight countries!"

"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."

"War contributes greatly to global warming, which shouldn't surprise us. All those bombs going off, all those rockets, all those planes and helicopters. All that fuel of various kinds being used. It pollutes the air and water of this very fragile and interconnected planet."

"When it is all too much; when the news is so bad meditation itself feels useless, and a single life feels too small a stone to offer on the altar of Peace, find a Human Sunrise. Find those people who are committed to changing our scary reality. Human sunrises are happening all over the earth, at every moment. People gathering, people working to change the intolerable, people coming in their robes and sandals or in their rags and bare feet, and they are singing, or not, and they are chanting, or not. But they are working to bring peace, light, compassion, to the infinitely frightening downhill slide of Human life."

"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."

"Now. Is this life or not?I be so calm.If she come, I be happy. If she don't, I be content.And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn."

"The Nature of This Flower is to bloom."

"Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion."

"It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man."

"I believe that the truth of any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together."

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

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

"I've learned not to worry about love, but to honor its coming with all my heart."

"Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.You saying God vain? I ast.Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.What it do when it pissed off? I ast.Oh, it make something else. 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."

"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."

"The mountain of despair has dwindled, and the stone of hope has size and shape, and can be fondled by the eyes and by the hand. But freedom has always been an elusive tease, and in the very act of grabbing for it one can become shackled."

"This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy."

"Once us feel loved by God, us do the best us can to please him with what us like."

"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."

"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."

"I try to teach my heart not to want things it can't have."

"In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you've become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that's the height of intelligence."

"When I no longer have your heartI will not request your bodyyour presenceor even your polite conversation.I will go away to a far countryseparated from you by the sea- on which I cannot walk -and refrain even from sendinglettersdescribing my pain."

"A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something."

"I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe."

"People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don't."

"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."

"I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered."

"Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness."

"When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us."

"It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all."

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

"How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names."

"Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown."

"All these faces look happy enough, say Shug. Big and beefy. Eyes clear and innocent, like they don't know them other crooks on the front page. But they the same folks, she say."

"Surely the earth can be savedby all the peoplewho insiston love."

"Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom."

"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."

"If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it."

"Our mothers and our grandmothers some of them: moving to music not yet written."

"Even as I hold youI think of you as someone gonefar, far away. Your eyes the colorof pennies in a bowl of dark honeybringing sweet light to someone elseyour black hair slipping through my fingersis the flash of your head goingaround a corneryour smile, breaking before me,the flippant last turnof a revolving door,emptying you out, changed,away from me.Even as I hold youI am letting go."

"As long as the Earth can make a spring every year I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit I can because I'm the Earth. I won't give up until the Earth gives up."