Kathryn Stockett Quotes - Page 3

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.

Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.

If singing was a color, it would've been the color of that chocolate.

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.

It can be really powerful to write something when youre sad.

Because ain’t that white people for you, wondering if they are happy enough.

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.

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.

Why don't we just build you an house outside Hilly?

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.

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.

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.

I nursed a worthless, pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life-sucking, daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears in my eyes I'd never marry one. And then I did.

Baby Girl," I say. "I need you remember everything I told you. Do you remember what I told you?" She still crying steady, but the hiccups are gone. "To wipe my bottom good when I'm done?" "No, baby, the other one. About who you are.

She hug me around my neck, say, "You're righter than Miss Taylor." I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me.

What you learn today?" I ask even though she ain't in real school, just the pretend kind. Other day, when I ask her, she say, "Pilgrims. They came over and nothing would grow so they ate the Indians." Now knew them Pilgrims didn't eat no Indians. But that ain't the point.

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.

Here's to new beginnings," Stuart says and raises his bourbon. I nod, sort of wanting to tell him that all beginnings are new.

I started writing it the day after Sept. 11. I was living in New York City. We didnt have any phone service and we didnt have any mail. Like a lot of writers do, I started to write in a voice that I missed.

Who knew heartbreak would be so goddamn hot.

Only three things them ladies talk about: they kids, they clothes, and they friends. I hear the word Kennedy, I know they ain’t discussing no politic. They talking about what Miss Jackie done wore on the tee-vee.

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.

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

Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.

Having a separate bathroom for the black domestic was just the way things were done. It had faded out in new homes by the time the '70s and '80s rolled up.