The Colour Purple Quotations (copy)
I amI have always been a good girl.
You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t.
He start to choke me, saying you better shut up and git used to it.
You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.
I say God’s. I don’t know no other man or what else to say.
I say God took it… Kilt it out there in the woods. Kill this one too, if he can.
She be my age but they married. He be on her all the time.
I tell Nettie to keep at her books.
He beat me today cause he say I winked at a boy in church.
I look at women, tho, cause I’m not scared of them.
She bout ten thousand times more prettier than me.
When I dream, I dream of Shug Avery.
He beat me for dressing trampy but he do it to me anyway.
She ain’t fresh tho…She spoiled. Twice.
She ugly. He say.
You can do everything just like you want to and she ain’t gonna make you feed it or clothe it.
And another thing- She tell lies.
Us know we got to be smart to git away.
I know I’m not as pretty or as smart as Nettie, but she say I ain’t dumb.
He never care that I love it…You too dumb to keep going to school.
When…she see how tight my dress is, she stop talking and go.
He pick up a rock and laid my head open…The blood run all down tween my breasts.
His daddy say Don’t do that! But that’s all he say.
Most times mens look pretty much alike to me.
When they git big they gon fight him..Maybe kill I say.
It nearly kill me to think she might marry somebody like Mr – or wind up in some white lady kitchen.
I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.
He just brought her here, dropped her, and kept right on running after Shug Avery.
Not so pretty…She too black.
Women work. I’m a man.
I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive.
Cause she my wife. Plus, she stubborn.
He beat me like he beat the children.
Well what she say?...Us ain’t never spoke.
Wash this. Iron that. Look for this. Look for that. Find this. Find that.
I just be thankful to lay eyes on her.
I been chopping cotton three hours by time he come.//He chop bout three chops then he don’t chop again.
You better git on back to the field.
His face begin to look like a woman face. [Harpo]
Whore you ain’t got no place. He shoot her in the stomach.
But I don’t feel nothing for them.
Young womens no good these days, he say. Got they legs open to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Never do what I say. Always backtalk.
To tell the truth, he sound a little proud of this to me.
Wives is like children. You have to let’em know who got the upper hand.
But it Harpo and Sofia. They fighting like two mens.
I sin against Sofia spirit.
I say it cause I’m jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can’t.
All my life I had to fight… A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men.
I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me.
He hate children and he hate where they come from.
All the girls big and strong like me…but all the girls stick together.
I can’t even remember the last time I felt mad.
Then I start to feel nothing at all.
Some kind of nasty woman disease.
Talk bout slut, hussy, heifer and streetcleaner.
The woman should have been your mammy, he say.
She dress to kill.
Like sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it… Then she cackle. Sound like a death rattle.
You sure is ugly.
I don’t need no weak little boy…I need me a man.
They have made three babies together but he squeamish bout giving her a bath.
First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery…I thought I had turned into a man.
Hateful. She weak as a kitten.
I wash her body, it feel like I’m praying.
I work on her like she a doll, or like she Olivia- or like she mama.
She black as tar, she nappy headed. She got legs like baseball bats.
First time I think about the world…What the world got to do with anything, I think.
For the first time in my life, I feel just right.
His daddy never wash a dish in his life.
I rather be out in the fields or fooling with the animals. Even chopping wood. But he love cooking and cleaning.
I want her to do what I say, like you do for Pa.
Sofia love you. You love Sofia.
All he think about since us married is how to make me mind. He don’t want a wife, he want a dog.
Got to say with him. Else, what you gon do?
Once he git on top of me I think bout how that’s where he always want to be.
Only time I feel something stirring down there is when I think bout Shug.
He git up there and enjoy himself just the same. No matter what I’m thinking. No matter what I feel. It just him.
They all big strong healthy girls, look like amazons.
Wives don’t go to places like that, he say.
Good thing I ain’t your damn wife. He hush then.
I hate the way I look, I hate the way I’m dress.
But Shug don’t love looking at but one of us. Him.
First time somebody made something and name it after me.
For being me and not you.
Most times I pretend I ain’t there. He never know the difference.
Why Miss Celie, she say, you still a virgin.
She whisper back, My children at home, where yours? He don’t say nothing.
It stop with Mr – maybe, but start up again with Shug.
That when I notice how Shug talk and act sometimes like a man.
All the men got they eyes glued to Shug’s bosom.
Harpo say, it just a scandless, a woman with five children hanging out in a jukejoint at night.
A woman need to be at home, he say.
Make Harpo call you by your real name.
All your children so clean, she say, would you like to work for me, be my maid?
Sofia say, Hell no.
Sofia knock the man down.
Then again, the sheriff know how womens is anyhow.
I dream of murder, she say, I dream of murder sleep or wake.
Us dress Squeak like she a white woman.
They have the nerve to try to make us think slavery fell through because of us.
Have you ever seen a white person and a colored sitting side by side in a car, when one of ‘em wasn’t showing the other how to drive it or clean it?
I couldn’t ride in a pick-up with a strange, coloured man.
I spent fifteen minutes with my children. And she been going on for months bout how ungrateful I is.
She buy Grady anything he think he want.
She say something nasty. She say fuck.
I start to cry too. I cry and cry and cry.
I thought it was only whitefolks do freakish things like that.
Nobody ever love me, I say. She say, I love you, Miss Celie.
Even if he do spend Shug’s money like he made it himself.
But one thing I sure nuff can’t stand the way he call Shug Mama.
I don’t know if I want her to sing, say Harpo.
Cause she the only one you ever love, she say, sides me.
When I hear Shug laugh I want to choke her, slap Mr – face.
I don’t know where England at. Don’t know where Africa at either.
I’m standing hind his chair with his razor open.
I stumble bout the house crazy for Mr – blood. In my mind, he falling dead every which a way.
Pretty soon I think maybe I’m dead.
Just when I hurt so much I don’t know my own name, they think it a good time to talk bout repent.
Her family forgot about her once she married.
She’d come and beg him for money to buy groceries for the children.
What was good tween us must have been nothing but bodies.
He said because of what I’ve done I’d never hear from you again, and you would never hear from me.
I was so mad myself I was shaking.
I remember one time you said your life made you feel so ashamed you couldn’t even talk about it to God, you had to write it.
Miss Beasley used to say it was a place overrun with savages who didn’t wear clothes. Even Corrine and Samuel thought like this at times.
I read where the Africans sold us because they loved money more than their own sisters and brothers.
All of the people are white and so you just think all the people from the Bible were white too.
Only white people can ride in the beds and use the restaurant.
There are colored people…living in houses that are finer than any white person’s house down home.
They love Africa. They defend it at the drop of a hat…Even the children dredged up their pennies. Please give these to the children of Africa, they said.
And all the people have indoor toilets, Celie. And gas or electric lights!
On every wall there was a picture of a white man.
And that we and the Africans will be working for a common goal: the uplift of black people everywhere.
They don’t own the cacao fields, Celie…People in a place called Holland do.
Nobody feel better for killing nothing. They feel something is all…That better than nothing.
What I need pants for? I say. I ain’t no man.
Mr – not going to let his wife wear pants…You do all the work around here.
A needle and not a razor in my hand, I think.
It hard to think bout them. I feels shame. More than love, to tell the truth.
They remind me of folks at home!
They naturally thought all missionaries were white people, and vice versa.
His wives were given to other men.
The roofleaf became the thing they worship.
The white missionary before you would not let us have this ceremony.
We know a roofleaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?
The Olinka 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.
Because she is where they are doing ‘boys’ things’ they do not see her.
They’re like white people at home who don’t want coloured people to learn.
Olivia gets sick from the food prepared by any of the chiefs wives…It is as if Olivia fears the food from these wives because they all look so unhappy and work so hard.
Even though they are unhappy and work like donkeys they still think it is an honor to be the chiefs wife.
That is as high as they can think, I tell her.
You will grow up to be a strong Christian woman, I tell her…You will be a teacher or a nurse.
Unlike our church, which doesn’t have walls.
The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.
There is always someone to look after the Olinka woman. A father. An uncle. A brother or nephew.
They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking.
To ‘look in a man’s face’ is a brazen thing to do.
All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could.
It is in work that women get to know and care about each other.
Some of them were promised to old or middle-aged men at birth.
A woman cannot really have a man for a friend without the worst kind of ostracism and gossip.
No wonder the men are often childish. And a grown child is a dangerous thing.
If he accuses one of his wives of witchcraft or infidelity, she can be killed.
I think Africans are very much like the white people back at home, in that they think they are the centre of the universe and that everything that is done is done for them.
With a tarmac road running straight through the middle of it, the village itself seems gutted.
We will fight the white man, they said…But the white man is not alone…He has brought his army.
More mothers are sending their daughters to school. The men do not like it: who wants a wife who knows everything her husband knows?
When the neighbours brought her husband’s body home it had been mutilated and burnt.
You must be sleep.
For the first time in my life, I wanted to see Pa. // I never thought I’d ever want to see him again.
He ain’t notice me and probably wouldn’t even if he looked at me.
He look older than the child he with, even if she is dress up like a woman.
But the fact is, you got to give ‘em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.
Lynched people don’t git no marker.
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others knowingly.
The villagers, who think women who have their friends should not even be seen.
The white men sat eating as if the food was beneath notice.
What happen to God? Ast Shug. Who that? I say.
What God do for me? I ast.
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.
If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.
They come to church to share God, not find God.
He big and old and tall and graybearded and white.
How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing one thing and another, and all the coloured folks doing is gitting cursed?
When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest.
I know white people never listen to coloured, period. If they do, they only listen long enough to be able to tell you what to do.
I believe God is everything, say Shug.
My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then other people…I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed.
Praise God by liking what you like.
Everything want to be loved.
Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make.
You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a’tall. Man corrupt everything, say Shug.
He try to make you think he is everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t.
Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.
You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.
And when she do, all us together gon whup your ass.
Turning out a heap better than the fools you didn’t even try to raise.
If you hadn’t tried to rule over Sofia the white folks never would have caught her.
You was all rotten children, I say. You made my life a hell on earth. And your daddy here ain’t dead horse’s shit.
Mr – reach over to slap me. I jab my case knife in his hand.
A woman can’t git a man if peoples talk.
Shut up Squeak, he say. It bad luck for women to laugh at men.
He look at Sofia. She look at him and laugh in his face.
I never ast you for nothing. Not even for your sorry hand in marriage.
I need to sing, say Squeak.
When I was Mary Agnes I could sing in public.
A lot of drinking in that family…Plus they can’t keep that boy of theirs in college. He get drunk, aggrevate his sister, chase women… and that ain’t all.
You know wherever there’s a man, there’s trouble.
I curse you, I say.
I say, Until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble.
You can’t curse nobody. Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all.
You better stop talking because all I’m telling you ain’t coming just from me.
The dirt say, Anything you do to me, already done to you.
I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook…But I’m here.
People fussing and fighting and pointing fingers at other people, and never even looking for no peace.
How much money you think you need this week?
I plan to make them by hand. Every stitch I sew will be a kiss.
Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind.
I say, Everything. Yeah, they say. That make a lots of sense.
They act like this the way it always done. I love folks.
You know meanness kill, she say.
Because they can see how powerless we and our God are.
I am a very wealthy woman, and I own the village of Akwee.
They want to work for the white people in order to have these things. Things! He said, in disgust. Bloody things!
Rather than cherish that medal, Madame, you should regard it as a symbol of your unwitting complicity with this despot.
The Africans never asked us to come, you know. There’s no use blaming them if we feel unwelcome.
It is a way the Olinka can show they still have their own ways, said Olivia, even though the white man has taken everything else.
Well, it’s a good thing he didn’t, I said. Tashi would have jammed his head through her rug loom.
She and Olivia hugged. But it was a quiet, heavy embrace.
The carving is done by force, under the most appalling conditions.
But I never had no house, I say.
For one thing, it been a long time since I thought about boys and I ain’t never thought about men.
And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.
How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I’ll have to speak to in a different way.
This the first time I ever lived on Earth as a natural man.
Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand it look like a weapon.
But so what? Sofia never wanted to be there in the first place.
Will it make any difference in the way he grow up to treat me what I think?
All the other colored women I know love children. The way you feel is something unnatural.
But all the colored women that say they love yours is lying…Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.
I got my own troubles, say Sofia, and when Reynolds Stanley grow up, he’s gon be one of them.
You and whose army? say Sofia. The first word he likely to speak won’t be nothing he learn from you.
Sometimes I feel mad at her. Feel like I could scratch her hair right off her head.
Just cause I love her don’t take away none of her rights.
My job just to love her good and true myself.
What Shug got is womanly it seem like to me. Specially since she and Sofia the ones got it.
Sofia and Shug not like men, he say, but they not like women either. You mean they not like you or me.
But my daddy was the boss. He give me the wife he wanted me to have.
We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, and our own self is what us have to hand.
First time he ever thought bout what Africans do.
They don’t like nothing around them that look or act different. They want everybody to be just alike.
Then they will become the new serpent. And wherever a white person is found he’ll be crush by somebody not white, just like they do us today.
Nobody in America will like me, says Tashi. I will like you, says Adam.
Adam announced his desire to marry Tashi. Tashi announced her refusal to be married.
They bleach their faces, she said. They fry their hair. They try to look naked.
You’d have a sister, said Olivia.
So, the next day, our boy came to us with scars identical to Tashi’s on his cheeks.
Well, you got me behind you, anyway, say Harpo. And I loves every judgement you ever made. He move up and kiss her where her nose was stitch.
Everybody learn something in life, she say. And they laugh.
A lot of people love Shug, but nobody but Shug love me.
Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God. Thank you for bringing my sister Nettie and our children home.
Then us both start to moan and cry. Us totter toward one nother like us use to do when us was babies.