The Color Purple Quotes

quotes for each theme

struggle/suffering/oppression

🌀”He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it. But I don’t never got used to it”

🌀”the scandal his wife cause when somebody kill her?”

🌀”I love children, say Sofia. But all the colored women that say they love yours is lying”

🌀female genital mutilation
- “you better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy”

• “I don’t bleed no more” — Pa took away her fertility, so she is unable to have any more children if she were to have a normal marriage, and her own children were taken away. removed the rights of her motherhood and self

overcoming obstacles

🌀”Until you do right by me, everything you even dream about will fail”

🌀”I’m poor, I’m black, I might even be ugly, but dear God, I’m here. I’m here.”

🌀”our boy came to us with scars identical to Tashi’s on his cheek”

changing attitudes/change

🌀”It don’t surprise me you love Shug Avery, he say. I have love Shug Avery all my life”

🌀”the old devil put his arms around me and just stood there on the porch with me real quiet”

🌀”She stand up. My name Mary Agnes” — reclaiming her identity

🌀”Miss Eleanor Jane gon look in on Henrietta”

🌀”Harpo holding his daddy in his arms”

🌀”This Daisy, he say. My new wife.” - Alphonso marries a 15 year old girl when Mary Ellen “got too old for me”

• “What, too shamefaced to put singing and dancing and fucking together? She laugh. That’s the reason they call what us sing the devil’s music. Devil’s love to fuck.” — Shug empowering Mary Agnes’ voice, showing how she helps and affects other characters through her love

• “here us is, I thought, two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars”

• “I be so calm”

creativity

🌀”I embroder lot of little stars and flowers too”

🌀”Let’s make quilt pieces out of these messed up curtains” - celie talking to sofia

🌀”She hum a little more. Something come to me, she say. Something I made up. Something you help scratch out my head”

🌀”When I was growing up, he said, I use to try to sew along with mama […] everybody laughed at me. But you know, I liked it”

🌀”They calls me yellow like yellow be my name” - Mary Agnes sings, shows the troubles she goes through with being mixed race, not belonging anywhere

companionship/partnership

🌀”If the quilt turn out perfect, maybe I give it to her”

🌀”I still love Harpo, but — he just make me real tired”

🌀”My heart hurt so much I can’t believe it”

🌀”When Shug left, happiness desert”

• I brought you here to love you and help you get on your feet.” — Shug determined to love + support Celie when nobody has, help her confidence and get away from Mr___. Like her duty, she kind of leaves her romantically after and moves on, but Celie is able to accept it as her ultimate role was to make Celie independent, not dependent on her

motherhood

🌀”I seen my baby girl […] my heart say she mine”

🌀”I don’t miss nothing” (Shug about her children)

🌀 “his mama stop everything to nurse him” - Sofia stopping during her wedding to breastfeed her baby

• “my mama dead. she dies screaming and cussing” — Celie took over the mother role once her mother passed away — never had a childhood, yet selflessly loved her own children and looked after the children of others

spirituality

🌀”I say God took it. He took it”

🌀”God is different to us now […] not being tied to what God looks like, frees us” -Nettie

🌀”I believe God is everything”

🌀”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”

🌀”God love all them feelings”

🌀page 173-178

🌀”Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees , dear sky, dear peoples. Dear everything. Dear God." - ends the novel on a full circle as she sees god in everything and everyone and that she is no longer held back by the old taboos of religion

• “my first step form the old white man was trees. then air. then birds. then other people. but one day… that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all”

• “we know a roof leaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?” — Nettie, the roof leaf gives them shelter + signifies safety — she has rejected the idea of a white god + is accepting other ways of viewing god

barriers

🌀”You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman (…), you nothing at all”

🌀”If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place”

🌀”She busy looking at a magazine. White women in it laughing […] Look dissatisfied.”

🌀”it was clear to her that black people did not truly admire blackskinned black people like herself”

autonomy/freedom

🌀”But I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt”

🌀 “us smoked it all the way down to the basement, chasing out all the evil and making a place for good.” - freedom when alphonso died

🌀”Shug got a right to live too. She got a right to look over the world in whatever company she choose.”

friendship

🌀”I say it cause I’m a fool, […] I say it cause you do what I can’t”

🌀”At the last minute I decide to give Sofia the quilt”

🌀”Here is is, I thought, two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars”

🌀”She and Olivia hugged. But it was a quiet, heavy embrace”

the past

🌀”anything coming from him, I don’t want it. […] That dog of a stepdaddy just bad odor passing through”

🌀”tell me the truth. You don’t like me cause I’m a man?”

gender roles

🌀”All women good for — he don’t finish”

🌀”I rather be out in the fields […] but he love cooking and cleaning”

🌀”But he changed her anyway. Him and the baby”

• “wives is like children. you have to let ‘em know who got the upper hand” —

  Mr ___

• “even though they are unhappy and work like donkeys they still think it is an honor to be the chief’s wife” - nettie

marriage

🌀”After that, I start to feel again for Harpo. […] But did I say it been easy?”

🌀”I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read”- Nettie about Samuel

otherness/loneliness/alienation

🌀”Sofia sit down at the big table like there’s no room for her. Children reach cross her like she not there.”

🌀”I spend my wedding day running from the oldest boy”

🌀”long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along” - lonely, still reliant on male figures, she only had Nettie but she stops seeing her

🌀”Nothing but death can keep me from it. She never write.”

🌀”the worst part was having to listen to his own heart. […] as soon as night come, it went crazy. Beating so loud it shook the room.” - Albert lonely when Celie left him

🌀 ”They calls me yellow like yellow be my name”

🌀”All my life I had to fight. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men.”

power

🌀”they fighting like two mens”

🌀”sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it”

🌀”I don’t need no weak little boy”

🌀”Sofia say, Hell no. […] They beat Sofia […] They crack her skull, they crack her ribs”

🌀”Poor little Squeak come home with a limp. Her dress rip.”

confinement

🌀”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.”

🌀”among the Olinka, the husband has life and death power over the wife. If he accuses one of his wives of witchcraft or infidelity, she can be killed”

🌀”the white man has taken everything else. Tashi didn't want to do it, but to make her people feel better, she's resigned”

morality

page 174-178

immorality

🌀”He act like he can’t stand me no more. Say I’m evil”

🌀”A little voice say, […] somebody spirit you sin against”

🌀”I feel like us been doing something wrong” - Celie feels immoral about her sexual actions

upheaval

🌀”When I see Sofia I don’t know why she still alive”

🌀”he beat me like he beat the children”

🌀”They fighting like two mens”

• “they crack her skull, they crack her ribs. They tear her nose loose on oneside. They blind her in one eye”

resistance/rebellion

🌀”I loves Harpo […] but I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me”

🌀”Don't let them run over you [...] you got to fight.”

• PANTS — Celie creates a pants making business, which subverts traditional gender roles, is a symbol of female power and equality, is perhaps more convenient for women who do manual labour, and she employs other women as her business grows, giving them some independence and the ability to provide for themselves

sexuality

🌀“I don’t even look at mens. […] I look at women, tho, cause I’m not scared of them.”

🌀“She bout ten thousand times more prettier then me. […] I dream of Shug Avery.”

🌀”I look at her and touch it with my finger. A little shiver go through me.”

🌀”Sometimes I think Shug never love me. I stand looking at my naked self in the looking glass. What would she love?”

• “I wash her body, it feel like I’m praying” - Celie

• “God love all them feelings” — Shug reassures Celie that she shouldn’t be ashamed of her sexual feelings

sisterhood

🌀”She tell me, Your skin. Your hair. Your teefs. […] After a while I git to feeling pretty cute.”

🌀”Every stitch I sew will be a kiss”

🌀”I don’t write to God no more, I write to you.”

female competition

🌀”Not so pretty, say Carrie, looking in the looking glass. Just that head of hair. She too black.” — about shug

🌀”Beat her. I say”

🌀”A woman at church say she dying — maybe two berkulosis or some nasty woman disease”

🌀”Why do my children look like you?” -Corrine envious and suspicious on Nettie having an affair with Samuel

Key events in the novel (Page numbers)

pg. 14 — Celie gets married

pg. 42 — Shug comes home

pg. 80 — Sofia is beaten and sent to prison

pg. 113 — Celie finds out Albert has been hiding Nettie’s letters

pg. 179 — Shug and Celie tell everyone they’re leaving

pg. 220 — Alphonso dies and Celie gets her house

identity

• “when a woman marries she supposed to keep a decent house and a clean family”

• “I don’t know where England at. Don’t know where Africa at either.”

• “got on some dark blue pants […] and a flower in my hair, I pass Mr ___ house and him sitting on the porch and he didn’t even know who I was” — massive change in her appearance and personality — much more confident in her appearance, describing her clothes like never before

THEMES — Purple

• initially, the colour purple was attached to bruises and abusive side of Celie’s life

• later, is linked to femininity, royalty + empowerment