"Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.You saying God vain? I ast.Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.What it do when it pissed off? I ast.Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back."
"But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain"
"Hard times' is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa's 'hard times' were made harder by them."
"Time moves slowly, but passes quickly."
"And I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have."
"Now. Is this life or not?I be so calm.If she come, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content.And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn."
"Naw, I say. Mr ____, can tell you, I don't like it at all. What is it to like? He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I ain't there. He never know the difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep.She start to laugh. Do his business, she say. Do his business. Why, Miss Celie. You make it sound like he going to the toilet on you.That's what it feel like, I say.She stop laughing."
"I don't know who tried to teach him what to do in the bedroom, but it must have been a furniture salesman."
"Shug say, What, too shamefaced to put singing and dancing and fucking together? She laugh. That’s the reason they call what us sing the devil’s music. Devils love to fuck."
"What will people say, you running off to Memphis like you don't have a house to look after?Shug say, Albert. Try to think like you got some sense. Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.Well, say Grady, trying to bring light. A woman can't git a man if peoples talk.Shug look at me and us giggle. Then us laugh sure nuff. Then Squeak start to laugh. Then Sofia. All us laugh and"
"Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand she make it look like a weapon."
"He say, Celie, tell me the truth. You don't like me cause I'm a man?I blow my nose. take off they pants, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss 'em, as far as I'm concern, frogs is what they stay."
"A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something."
"First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man"
"But what was good tween us must have been nothing but bodies, she say. Cause I don't know the Albert that don't dance, can't hardly laugh, never talk bout nothing, beat you and hid your sister Nettie's letters. Who he?"
"Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown."
"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back."
"All these faces look happy enough, say Shug. Big and beefy. Eyes clear and innocent, like they don't know them other crooks on the front page. But they the same folks, she say."
"He beat me when you not here, I say.Who do, she say, Albert?Mr ____, I say.I can't believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop.What he beat you for? she ast.For being me and not you."
"Then he say something that really surprise me cause it so thoughtful and common sense. When it come to what folks do together with they bodies, he say, anybody's guess is as good as mine. But when you talk about love I don't have to guess. I have love and I have been love. And I thank God he let me gain understanding enough to know love can't be halted just cause some peoples moan and groan."
"It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man."
"She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum. Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it"
"It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period"
"I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is."