Highlights from all books

It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That’s how come I know trees fear man.

She skinny as a bean, and her face full of eyes.

There’s no beginning or end to teaching and learning and working—it all runs together.

We know a roofleaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?

She say, Celie, tell the truth, 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.

God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.

My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, 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. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house.

God love all them feelings. That’s some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves ’em you enjoys ’em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that’s going, and praise God by liking what you like...more than anything else, God love admiration.

People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

I just feel funny living in a square. If I was square, then I could take it better, she say.

She got a right to look over the world in whatever company she choose. Just cause I love her don’t take away none of her rights.

Here us is, I thought, two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars.

The only way to stop making somebody the serpent is for everybody to accept everybody else as a child of God, or one mother’s children, no matter what they look like or how they act.

It didn’t take long to realize I didn’t hardly know nothing.

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.

We must remember these people when we are safely in the future.

Butter was plastered onto the roll with no regard for the hard labor of the cow.

They also serve who only stand and wait.

It was quite wearyingly relentless but the only way that one could go was forward.

She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing in the air like long-lost souls.