Alice Walker

My mother had handed down respect for the possibilities...and the will to grasp them.

We will be ourselves and free, or die in the attempt. Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing.

Whenever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared. I have been helped, supported, encouraged and nurtured by people of all races, creeds, colors and dreams.

Our mothers and grandmothers ... moving to music not yet written.

War will stop when we no longer praise it, or give it any attention at all. Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited.

Be compassionate to everyone. Don't just search for whatever it is that annoys and frightens you-see beyond those things to the basic human being. Especially see the child in the man or woman. Even if they are destroying you, allow a moment to see how lost in their own delusion and suffering they are.

I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It.

You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself. I don't say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don't fight, I stay where I'm told. But I'm alive.

The Olinka girls 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. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.

It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it.

When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.

(a womanist) 3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.

I'm mad about the waste that happens when people who love each other can't even bring themselves to talk.

...have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.

Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

A grown child is a dangerous thing.

we are the ones we have been waiting for

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

I feel a little peculiar around the children. For one thing, they grown. And I see they think me and Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sofia and Jack and Odessa real old and don't know much what going on. 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.

Resistance is the secret of joy!

Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.