Kathryn Stockett

“I tucked this away, afraid to admit how good it was to hear it.”

“I can't wear a man's jacket with a ball gown." She rolls her eyes at him, sighs. But thanks, honey.”

“She blow em clean over. She suck the grits off the candle and start eating. After while, she smile up at me, say, "How old are you?""Aibileen's fifty-three."Her eyes get real wide. I might as well be a thousand.”

“We must keep this a perfect secret.”

“And I know there are plenty of other "colored" things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon's meetings- the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate. But truth is, I don't care that much about voting. I don't care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.”

“I'm tired of the rules," I say.”

“Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.”

“Miss Celia stares down into the pot like she's looking for her future. "Are you happy, Minny?""Why you ask me funny questions like that?""But are you?""Course I's happy. You happy too. Big house, big yard, husband looking after you." I frown at Miss Celia and I make sure she can see it. Because ain't that white people for you, wondering if they are happy ENOUGH.”

“—Si alguna mujé blanca lee algún día mi historia, sólo quiero que recuerde esto: que dar las grasias de corazón cuando piensas en to lo que alguien ha hecho por ti —mueve la cabeza y mira la mesa llena de arañazos—, es algo mu bonito.”

“I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.”

“Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.”

“…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.”

“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, something we both knew meant 'Listen to me.' "Every 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.”

“And you call yourself a Christian,' were Hilly's words to me and I thought, God. When did I ever do that?”

“Mrs. Charlotte Phelan's Guide to Husband-Hunting, Rule Number One: a pretty, petite girl should accentuate with makeup and good posture. A tall plain one, with a trust fund.”

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

“She's like a Philistine on a Sunday, the way she won't take but so many steps a day. Except every day's Sunday around here.”

“I tell myself that's what you get when you put thirty-one toilets on the most popular girl's front yard. People tend to treat you a little differently than before.”

“She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.”

“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.”

“That's the way prayer do. It's like electricity, it keeps things going.”

“I've become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town's Boo Radley, just like in To Kill A Mockingbird.”

“....we ain't doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.”

“Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don't know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons.”

“When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.”

“Down in the national news section, there's an article on a new pill, the 'Valium' they're calling it, 'to help women cope with everyday challenges.' God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.”

“That's all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.”

“At one O'Clock, Miss Celia comes in the kitchen and says she's ready for her first cooking lesson. She settles on a stool. She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.”

“Stuart needs "space" and "time," as if this were physics and not a human relationship.”

“There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary...”

“Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.”

“Babies love fat.”

“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.”

“it always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.”

“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.”

“You got nothing left here but enemies in the Junior League and a mama that's gonna drive you to drink. You done burned ever bridge there is. And you ain't never gone get another boyfriend in this town and everbody know it. So don't walk your white butt to New York, run it.”

“I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality...”

“they say it's like true love, good help. you only get one in a lifetime.....there is so much you don't know about a person. i wonder if i could've made her days a little bit easier, if I'd tried. if i'd treated her a little nicer.....”

“But after Mr. Evers got shot a week ago, lot a colored folk is frustrated in this town. Especially the younger ones, who ain't built up a callus yet. ”

“...My sister Doreena who never lifted a royal finger growing up because she had the heart defect that we later found out was a fly on the X-ray machine. ”

“Rich folk don't try so hard”

“I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites. ... I pray that wasn't her moment, Pray I still got time.”

“....I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”

“I used to believe in em (lines). I don't anymore. They in our heads. Lines between black and white ain't there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.”

“Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.”

“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?”

“Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person.”

“Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.”

“I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close. And I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine, and a gorgeous shade of toast. The stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like starch. Like pine. His nose wasn’t so pointy afterall. …And 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.”

“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.”