100 Inspiring Quotes By Alice Walker, The Author Of The Color Purple

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

  

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

  

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

Think

  

Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.

  

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

  

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Me

  

What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.

  

Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm.

Like

  

Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.

  

Activism is my rent for living on the planet.

  

Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance and holler, just trying to be loved.

Trying

  

Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.

  

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

Time

  

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

  

Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself.

  

In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they're still beautiful.

  

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

  

Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.

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

  

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

  

The nature of this flower is to bloom.

  

We are the ones we have been waiting for

  

Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

Never

  

When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle Willingly burning my self To light up the darkness around me.

Life , Me

  

A grown child is a dangerous thing.

  

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

  

Never offer your heart to someone who eats hearts who finds heartmeat delicious but not rare who sucks the juices drop by drop and bloody-chinned grins like a God.

Never

  

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.

Think , Trying

  

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

  

She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.

  

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

  

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

  

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?

Trying

  

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

Life

  

She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it.

  

I have fought and kicked and fasted and prayed and cursed and cried myself to the point of existing.

  

(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.

Music

  

Surely the earth can be saved by all the people who insist on love.

  

Everything want to be loved.

  

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

  

What you hope for, you also fear.

  

You must learn to love only that which cannot be stolen.

  

I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers...

  

Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

Time

  

Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored

  

The more I wonder, the more I love.

  

I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

  

The world is changing. It is no longer a world just for boys and men

  

Like I said...fine with me.

Like , Me

  

It is this broken road with pitfalls and sharp turns and unexpected traverses that has brought me joy and adventure.

Me

  

I'm always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.

  

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.

  

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.

  

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise

  

We do not believe in heaven or hell...; we do not believe in eternal damnation. We believe only in the unavoidable horror of hurting others and of likewise being hurt.

  

Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there.

Think

  

His little whistle sound like it lost way down a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek. P. 64

Like

  

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Me

  

It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period

Yourself

  

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender

  

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

  

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

  

Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.

Time

  

Resistance is the secret of joy!

  

The only way to solace anyone who loved you in life is to be a good memory

Life

  

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

  

The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.

Life

  

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

Time

  

A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world...

  

But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain

Trying

  

I love his dear eyes in which the vulnerability and beauty of his soul can be plainly read.

  

Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of a sister?

  

My heart hurt so much I can't believe it. How can it keep beating, feeling like this?

Like

  

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.

Time

  

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.

Me

  

We all have to start somewhere if us want to do better, an d out of self is what us have to hand

  

If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

  

You a low down dog is what’s wrong. It’s time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.

Time

  

If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.

Yourself

  

Helped are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth. -----“The Gospel According to Shug

  

Aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat.

Me , Never

  

If she come, I be happy. If she don't, I be content.

  

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

  

But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

  

The world has changed: it did not change without your prayers without your faith without your determination to believe in liberation and kindness; without your dancing through the years that had no beat.

  

Not only will your teachers appear, but they will cook new foods for you.

  

This is the true wine of astonishment: "We are not over when we think we are.

Think

  

Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.

Me , Think

  

You seem so clear about who you are. So certain that you are just right as you are, that for all your intelligence and maybe in spite of it, you never seem to need a second opinion.

Never

  

Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God.

  

The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom Rebellious. Living. Against the Elemental Crush. A Song of Color Blooming For Deserving Eyes. Blooming Gloriously For its Self.

  

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

Think

  

A burnt finger remember the fire.

  

Too much respect for people who are not respectful to you is a sure sign of insecurity.

  

Women have to summon courage to fulfill dormant dreams.

  

Just cause I love her don't take away none of her rights.

  

I can't fix my mouth to say how I feel.

  

Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand she make it look like a weapon.

Like

  

She look so stylish it like the trees all round the house draw themself up tall for a better look.

Like

  

The God of woman is autonomy