“All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.”

“She say, All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy, I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me. Now if you want a dead son-in-law you just keep on advising him like you doing. She put her hand on her hip. I used to hunt game with a bow and arrow, she say.”

“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.”

“I had to fight all my life to survive. They were all against me… but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch.”

“Well, sometime Mr —— git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways.You ought to bash Mr —— head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.”

“This was not the state of mind I was accustomed to, at the outset of an expedition. But one does not fight the battles he wishes to fight; he fights the battles that find him. I would do my best to ignore my foul mood and physical discomfort, and plunge ahead as I had planned.”

“It was then that I slipped in the darkness, unable to know if I could be seen.I made myself small in the darkness, unable to know if I could be seen. I had left for hours every day for eight and a half years as I had left my mother or Ruth and Ray, my brother and sister, and certainly Mr. Harvey, but he, I now saw had never left me. His devotion to me had made me know again and again that I had been beloved. In the warm light of my father’s love I had remained Susie Salmon-a girl with my whole life in front of me. “I thought if I was very quiet I would hear you,” he whispered.“If I was still enough you might come back.”