858 Quotes by Alice Walker

Just because I don’t harass it like some peoples us know don’t mean I ain’t got religion.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father’s head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

Tashi’s mother and father were just here. They are upset because she spends so much time with Olivia. She is changing, becoming quiet and too thoughtful, they say. She is becoming someone else; her face is beginning to show the spirit of one of her aunts who was sold to the trader because she no longer fit into village life. This aunt refused to marry the man chosen for her. Refused to bow to the chief. Did nothing but lay up, crack cola nuts between her teeth and giggle.

It’s essential that we understand that taking care of the planet will be done as we take care of ourselves. You know that you can’t really make much of a difference in things until you change yourself.

Criticism is painful when it’s not done with love.

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.

That she had seen the magazines we receive from home and that it was very clear to her that black people did not truly admire blackskinned black people like herself, and especially did not admire blackskinned black women. They bleach their faces, she said. They fry their hair. They try to look naked.

If you’re silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

That was the beginning of her abstraction.