The Color Purple (The Color Purple Collection, #1)

by Alice Walker

He love looking at Shug. I love looking at Shug. But Shug don’t love looking at but one of us. Him. But that the way it spose to be. I know that. But if that so, why my heart hurt me so?

What he beat you for? she ast. For being me and not you.

you was my wife, she say, I’d cover you up with kisses stead of licks, and work hard for you too.

unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

But, Celie, in the middle of the night she woke up, turned to Samuel and said: I believe. And died anyway.

Yeah, I say, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. 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.

Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show.

If you wait to find God in church, Celie, she say, that’s who is bound to show up, cause that’s where he live. How come? I ast. Cause that’s the one that’s in the white folks’ white bible.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I’ll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will be.

The first man that was white. Not the first man. They say nobody so crazy they think they can say who was the first man. But everybody notice the first white man cause he was white.