Quotes from Alice Walker

there could be no happy community in which there was one unhappy child.

The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.

And I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have.

I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time.

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. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.

Be what they do not want: Be thoughtful. Be skilled at loving. Be of good heart. Be of the world tribe.

How do we make new and restorative of soul the old pain? How do we learn to carry with grace and humor all that has happened to us?

Our mothers taught us that in the old, old days, when they were their grandmothers and their grandmothers were old—for we are our grandmothers, you understand, only with lots of new and different things added

I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found it.

remember one time you said your life made you feel so ashamed you couldn't even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me. Anyway, when I don't write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don't pray, locked up in myself and choking on my own heart. I am so lonely, Celie.

The world was almost at the point of forgetting what a fine time people can have helping one other. That people like to work together and to kick back after work and share their expansiveness. What would happen if our foreign policy centered on the cultivation of joy rather than pain?

Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream about will fail.