Meridian Quotes

“She noticed that other girls were falling in love, getting married. It seemed to produce a state of euphoria in them. She became unsure that her own way of living was as pleasant as she thought it was. It seemed to have an aimlessness to it that did not lead anywhere. Day followed day, and the calm level of her pleasures as a single woman remained constant. Certainly she never reached euphoria. And she wanted euphoria to add to the other good feelings she had.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“The mysterious inner life that she had imagined gave them a secret joy was simply a full knowledge of the fact that they were dead, living just enough for their children.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“And there was no entertainment for them at night. They were too poor to own a television set. But they seemed content. Truman with his sculpting and building the recreation center. Lynne writing poems occasionally, reading them to her friends, then tearing them up.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“Because I know. Grown-up white men don’t want to pretend to be anything else. Not even for a minute.” “They’ll become anything for as long as it takes to steal some land.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“She was never thought of as a pretty girl. People might say she looked interesting, mysterious, older than her years and therefore intriguing, but she was considered approaching beautiful only when she looked sad.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“Because I know. Grown-up white men don’t want to pretend to be anything else. Not even for a minute.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“That was the beginning of her abstraction.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“there because of her brilliance but only tolerated because it was clear she was one, too, on whom true Ladyhood would never be conferred.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“She did not see why anyone should worry about her soul, even the people she marched with. “When it gives me trouble,” she’d sneer, “I’ll call y’all.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“Spanish moss draggled bloody to the ground; amen corners creaked with grief; and the thrill of being able, once again, to endure unendurable loss produced so profound an ecstasy in mourners that they strutted, without noticing their feet, along the thin backs of benches: their piercing shouts of anguish and joy never interrupted by an inglorious fall.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“Her senior thesis was based on the notion that no one should be allowed to own more land than could be worked in a day, by hand.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“The answer to everything,” said Meridian's mother, “is we live in America and we’re not rich.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian

“The answer to everything," said Meridian's mother, "is we live in America and were not rich.”
― Alice Walker, Meridian