The Color Purple Collection Quotes

“you must live in the world today as you wish everyone to live in the world to come. That can be your contribution. Otherwise, the world you want will never be formed. Why? Because you are waiting for others to do what you are not doing; and they are waiting for you, and so on. The planet goes from bad to worse.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth. HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator’s magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing. HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous. HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. HELPED are those who love the lesbian, the gay, and the straight, as they love the sun, the moon, and the stars. None of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves shall be despised. HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion. HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another—plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid. HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass. HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differentness. HELPED are those who know.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“there could be no happy community in which there was one unhappy child.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“I took it up so that I would be forced to touch people, even those I might not like, in gentleness, and be forced to acknowledge both their bodily reality as people and also their pain.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“there’s no beginning or end to teaching and learning and working—it all runs together.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“Don’t let them run over you, Nettie say. You got to let them know who got the upper hand.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“the book’s intent: to explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already a spiritual captive, but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like Nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant Divine.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“In 2005, The Color Purple became a phenomenally successful Broadway musical, playing to packed houses every night for over a year. In the process it transformed the “Great White Way” into a place where people of all colors, orientations and identities gathered to experience the show and to celebrate “God” as Life and Love, Perseverance, Hope, Creativity and Joy.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“learned from them that he couldn’t wait for Fanny to share, “we survived living in New York. Fight with me,” he said. “Scream. You have nice big teeth; bite me.” Fanny’s lovely mouth was shaping the words, in horror, “Bite me?” “But don’t just go off inside yourself and assume”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“Here’s to all the children who grow up without their fathers. The world is full of us ... and some of us have managed anyhow!”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“that human compassion is equal to human cruelty and that it is up to each of us to tip the balance. I”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another—plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid. H”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“Writers,’ she mused. ‘Does anybody else cause as much trouble, in the long run? But I can tell you what my father would say: Writers don’t cause trouble so much as they describe it. Once it is described, trouble takes on a life visible to all, whereas until it is described, and made visible, only a few are able to see it. Still, there is something about writers ...’ Nzingha laughed. ‘As the Russians are finding out, they’re damned hard people to re-educate. I think it is a kind of curlicue they have in the brain. They come into the world with a certain perspective, and the drive to share it. This curlicue is totally lacking in other people; I don’t know why.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“I never dreamed I would so enjoy having a father. It is like having another interesting mind, somewhat similar to your own but also strangely different, to rummage through.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“She was a literal speaker. What she expressed she both felt and was.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“Of what was plastic made? What died? He knew it was a product of petroleum, of oil, and so he assumed plastic was made out of the very lifeblood of the planet. When all the oil was drained, he imagined the planet quaking and shrinking in on itself, like a squeezed orange that has been sucked to death. He”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“I would have thought that a book that begins “Dear God” would immediately have been identified as a book about the desire to encounter, to hear from, the Ultimate Ancestor. Perhaps it is a sign of our times that this was infrequently the case.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“One crying child is the rotten apple in the barrel of the tribe!”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“Whenever I met someone who seemed to know a lot about a subject, and who evinced, moreover, a certain happiness in his or her being, and if I were interested in the subject, I asked to be taught what they knew.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“THEY CANNOT KILL US, BECAUSE WITHOUT US THEY DIE.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy

“breaking the heart opens it.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple Collection: The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy