Quotes from Alice Walker

Although only 7 percent of Americans have passports—a shocking realization since we seem to be everywhere—99 percent of us have television or the Internet.

She say Columbus come here in boats call the Neater, the Peter, and the Santomareater. Indians so nice to him he force a bunch of 'em back home with him to wait on the queen.

Whatever had made her think she knew what love was or was not?

it is the sense that something that was alive for a very long time is still alive. Not yet beaten into submission or oblivion by those who kill everything they touch with money.

Quand t'as envie de prier et que l'homme se met devant toi comme si c'était pour lui, envoie-le balader. Pense aux petites fleurs, au vent, à l'eau, à un gros cailloux.

early wildflowers. Then us

Well, you know how niggers is. Can't nobody tell 'em nothing even today. Can't be ruled. Every nigger you see got a kingdom in his head.

I tell you, Chickadee I am afraid of people Who cannot cry Tears left unshed Turn to poison In the ducts Ask the next soldier you see Enjoying a massacre If this is not so. People who do not cry Are victims Of soul mutilation Paid for in Marlboros And trucks. Violence does not work Except for the man Who pays your salary Who knows If you could still weep You would not take the job.

how do you know when you really love someone? Sometimes you don't know, I said.

There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don't even look at women when women are speaking.

hadn't realized I was so ignorant, Celie. The little I knew about my own self wouldn't have filled a thimble! And to think Miss Beasley always said I was the smartest child she ever taught! But one thing I do thank her for, for teaching me to learn for myself, by reading and studying and writing a clear hand. And for keeping alive in me somehow the desire to know.

What I love best bout her is what she been through, I say. When you look in her eyes you know she been where she been, seen what she seen, did what she did. And now she know.

Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing.

it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

Cause she the only one you ever love, she say, sides me.

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.

No one is exempt from the possibility of a conscious connection to All That Is. Not the poor. Not the suffering. Not the writer sitting in the open field. This

A cerca que nós montou vai te dar uma liberdade certa, mas só se ocê não tiver medo de pegar numa arma. A arma é importante. Porque não sei se amor funciona com todo mundo. Um pouco de amor, um pouco de bala, é assim que acho que ocê devia fazer.

Others who were always within their rights to pay him practically nothing for his labor.

This room is very powerful: Buddha, golden, holding down one side; the primordial Great Mother, black, offering her bead of mitochondria holding down the other.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way...I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful...We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose

I saw everything fresh, and with wonder that I was in America at all. If a white person was rude I simply turned and stared. I never acknowledged the system that sanctioned rude behavior, but always responded directly to the person. How uncivilly you have been brought up! was the message of my stare.

My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people … it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed … you can't miss it.