Kathryn Stockett Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too.”

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

“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”

“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.”

“I’m sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?”

“Great books give you a feeling that you miss all day, until you finally get to crawl back inside those pages again.”

“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.”

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

“All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”

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

“I’d cry, if only I had the time to do it.”

“I may not remember my name or what country I live in, but you and that pie is something I will never forget.”

“It seems like at some point you’d run out of awful.”

“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?”

“...and that’s when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?”

“I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constantine’s voice singing. If singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.”

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

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

“Truth. It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life. Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.”

“Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.”

“No one tells us, girls who don’t go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens.”

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

“Love and hate are two horns on the same goat.”

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

“I thought I might write my stories down or read ’em to you. Ain’t no different in writin’ down my prayers.”

“I was raised by a colored woman. We love them, and they love us, but they can’t even use the toilets in our houses.”

“Courage sometimes skips a generation. Thank you for bringin’ it back to our family.”

“Eighteen people were killed in Jackson that night. Eight Black and ten White. I don’t think God has color in mind that he sets the tornado loose.”

“I was raised by a colored woman. We love them, and they love us, but they can’t even use the toilets in our houses.”

“No one had ever asked me what it felt like to be me. Once I told the truth about that, I felt free.”

“God says we need to love our enemies. It’s hard to do, but it can start by telling the truth.”

“You said to write about what disturbs me, particularly if it bothers no one else.”

“See, courage isn’t just about being brave. Courage is daring to do what is right, in spite of the weakness of our flesh.”