Quotes About Communication

Dear Nettie, I don't write to God no more, I write to you.

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. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground.

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, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me. Anyway, when I don't write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don't pray, locked up in myself and choking on my own heart. I am so lonely, Celie.

no person is a friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow

Because you rubbed my shoulder last night a poem traveled down my arm.

All he think about since us married is how to make me mind. He don't want a wife, he want a dog. (Walker 2000: 58)

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?

He is a very sensitive soul who hears what isn't said as clearly as what is.

We love them. We try every way we can to show that love. But they reject us. They never even listen to how we've suffered. And if they listen they say stupid things. Why don't you speak our language? they ask. Why can't you remember the old ways? Why aren't you happy in America, if everyone there drives motorcars?

Did people leave you, did their spirits simply take off, because you wouldn't read a book that turned them on? He now knew the answer was yes.

I smoke when I want to talk to God. I smoke when I want to make love. Lately I feel like me and God make love just fine anyhow.

I'm getting tired of Harpo, she say. All he think about since us married is how to make me mind. He don't want a wife, he want a dog.

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, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me. Anyway, when I don't write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don't pray, locked up in myself and choking on my own heart.

Some people don't understand that it is the nature of the eye to have seen forever, and the nature of the mind to recall anything that was ever known. Or that was the nature, I should say, until man started to put things on paper.

So he bought her a car, only he refuse to show her how to drive it.

They had a lot of love to give. But I needed love plus understanding. They run a little short of that.

I would have thought that a book that begins "Dear God" would immediately have been identified as a book about the desire to encounter, to hear from, the Ultimate Ancestor. Perhaps it is a sign of our times that this was infrequently the case.

There is no need to talk, really. It is something humans started a long time ago - I don't even remember why- and they've clung to it. Clinging to speech they've lost their ability to read one another, to feel one another, to know one another at a glance. Or with a sniff. It is entirely within human capability to do this.

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, bad as you thought your writing was.

Keep track of family members; talk with them, work and plan for the future with them, vacation with them, take them with you when you have something joyful to share.

It did not seem possible that people would bomb one another rather than talk. What fear was this, that kept silent until announced by the loudest sound on earth, the sound of worlds being destroyed. Was it the fear that ones own terror would be glimpsed, ones own childhood of terror guessed?

What make him pull through? I ast Oh, she say, Harpo made him send you the rest of your sister's letters. Right after that he start to improve. You know meanness kill, she say.

Look like to me only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind.

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, bad as you thought your writing was.