Kathryn Stockett
I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman.Collection: Growing Up
Who knew heartbreak would be so goddamn hot.Collection: Hot
...and that's when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?Collection: Wonder
I reckon that’s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns.Collection: Running
Oh, it was delicious to have someone to keep secrets with. If I'd had a sister or a brother closer in age, I guessed that's what it would be like. But it wasn't just smoking or skirting around Mother. It was having someone look at you after your mother has nearly fretted herself to death because you are freakishly tall and frizzy and odd. Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Wall
Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person.Collection: Mean
No one tells us, girls who don't go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens.Collection: Girl
She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.Collection: Makeup
I'm sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?Collection: Sorry
....we ain't doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.Collection: Rights
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.Collection: Girl
Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody’s business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems, you don’t go crying to her with yours—you can’t pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don’t want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me?Collection: Men
I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, Look how far weve come, because we hadnt come very far, to say the least. Although Jacksons population was half white and half black, I didnt have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.Collection: School
Bosoms are for bedrooms and breastfeeding.Collection: Breastfeeding
That's the way prayer do. It's like electricity, it keeps things going.Collection: Prayer
I'm tired of the rules," I say.Collection: Tired
I have decided not to die.Collection: Dies
As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of these people as an extension of your mother.Collection: Inspiring
I hear Raleigh's new accounting business isn't doing well. Maybe up in New York or somewhere it's a good thing, but in Jackson, Mississippi, people just don't care to do business with a rude, condescending asshole.Collection: New York
President Kennedy’s assassination, less than two weeks ago, has struck the world dumb. It’s like no one wants to be the first to break the silence. Nothing seems important.Collection: Two
I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.Collection: Years
Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.Collection: Hair
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Husband
I do wish that people talked about the subject of race, especially in the South.Collection: Race
Some readers tell me, 'We always treated our maid like she was a member of the family.' You know, that's interesting, but I wonder what your maid's perspective was on that.Collection: Interesting
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.Collection: Girl
And you call yourself a Christian,' were Hilly's words to me and I thought, God. When did I ever do that?Collection: Christian
Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.Collection: World
I'm pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn't something people felt compelled to examine. I have wished, for many years, that I'd been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question. She died when I was sixteen. I've spent years imagining what her answer would be. And that is why I wrote this book.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Baby
I may not remember my name or what country I live in, but you and that pie is something I will never forget.Collection: Country
I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month's worth a light bill for. I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.Collection: Mother
With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friendsCollection: Honesty
Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.Collection: Littles
...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.Collection: Growing Up
That's all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.Collection: Grit
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.Collection: Wrinkles
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.Collection: Makeup
it always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Sad
He let out a long sorry sigh and I love that look on his face, that disappointment. I understand now why girls resist,just for that sweet look of regret.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Frustrated
Rich folk don't try so hardCollection: Trying
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.Collection: Simple
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.Collection: Girl
I wash my hands, wonder how an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you'd just run out of awful.Collection: Running