“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Once upon a time they was two girls," I say. "one girl had black skin, one girl had white."
Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening.
"Little colored girl say to little white girl, 'How come your skin be so pale?' White girl say, 'I don't know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?'
"But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, 'Well, let's see. You got hair, I got hair.'"I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head.
"Little colored girl say 'I got a nose, you got a nose.'"I gives her little snout a tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me.
"Little white girl say, 'I got toes, you got toes.' And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can't get to mine cause I got my white work shoes on.
"'So we's the same. Just a different color', say that little colored girl. The little white girl she agreed and they was friends. The End."
Baby Girl just look at me. Law, that was a sorry story if I ever heard one. Wasn't even no plot to it. But Mae Mobley, she smile and say, "Tell it again.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Stuart needs "space" and "time," as if this were physics and not a human relationship.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“That's what I love about Aibileen, she can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so small and simple, they'll fit right in your pocket.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“I'm sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“That's the way prayer do. It's like electricity, it keeps things going.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“I'd cry, if only I had the time to do it.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“The first time I was ever called ugly, I was thirteen. It was a rich friend of my brother Carlton's over to shoot guns in the field.
'Why you crying, girl?' Constantine asked me in the kitchen.
I told her what the boy had called me, tears streaming down my face.
'Well? Is you?'
I blinked, paused my crying. 'Is I what?'
'Now you look a here, Egenia'-because constantien was the only one who'd occasionally follow Mama's rule. 'Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?'
'I don't know. I don't think so,' I sobbed.
Constantine sat down next to me, at the kitchen table. I heard the cracking of her swollen joints. She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of my hand, somthing we both knew meant Listen. Listen to me.
'Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision.' Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. 'You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?'
She kept her thumb pressed hard in my hand. I nodded that I understood. I was just smart enough to realize she meant white people. And even though I still felt miserable, and knew that I was, most likely, ugly, it was the first time she ever talked to me like I was something besides my mother's white child. All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“...and that's when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Truth.
It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that's been burning me up all my life.
Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“That was the day my whole world went black. Air looked black. Sun looked black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls of my house….Took three months before I even looked out the window, see the world still there. I was surprised to see the world didn’t stop.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“it always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“No one tells us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“It seems like at some point you'd run out of awful.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would've been Constantine's voice singing. If singing was a color, it would've been the color of that chocolate.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“...out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body-my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.”
― Kathryn Stockett, quote from The Help
“One sidelong glance at his dad and Ish walked back home. ‘Where the hell are you going now?’ Ish’s dad said. ‘Match. Why? You want to curse me some more?’ Ish said. ‘When you’ve wasted your entire life, what’s another day?’ Ish’s father said and the neighbours half-nodded their heads in sympathy. We missed the final five overs of the match. Luckily, India won and Ish didn’t get that upset. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Ishaan jumped. ‘Gopi on me tonight.’ I love idiots. Actually, Ishaan is not an idiot. At least not as much as Omi. It”
― Chetan Bhagat, quote from Three Mistakes of My Life
“You think plants don’t have feelings? Maybe not the type of feelings you and I have, but they do have planty feelings, really slow feelings that unfold or blossom over years rather than seconds.”
― quote from Holy Cow
“For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . .
When we don't listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't, others will abandon us.”
― Terry Tempest Williams, quote from When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice
“Frank treated customers with the contempt Rosy had only seen before at airport passport control. Even then, she’d never heard an immigration official refer to anybody as baldy.
“Hey, baldy,” Frank had said and whistled to call a customer back as though he were down in the paddock with an unruly herd. “You forgot your juice.”
Frank held up the bottle of Tropicana orange juice. And when… baldy came back, Frank slapped the bottle into his hand as though passing him the baton in a relay race, then waved the man aside—“Go!”—and pointed at the next customer.
“What do you want?” Frank said. “Cheese? Again? That’s three cheese you’ll have had in a row. Are you eating right?”
The customer stammered.
“Eh-but-eh-but-eh-but,” Frank mimicked. “Never mind. But think up a different filling next time. And not cheese and tomato.” He shook his head and made up the roll.”
― R.G. Manse, quote from Screw Friendship
“Do you believe in one thing, Ceony?” Her heart sped as he said her name. She considered the question. “I’ve never given it a great deal of thought. I suppose I don’t. I think I understand what you mean, about there being good in all faiths. In all gods, in all beliefs. When I think about it . . . I guess I’ve just taken what bits and pieces I felt were right for me and made my own faith with them. Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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