“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.”

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

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

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

“She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know.”

“We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in someways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed- is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them...”

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