Kathryn Stockett Quotes

I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.

I can't wear a man's jacket with a ball gown. She rolls her eyes at him, sighs. But thanks, honey.

Sometimes people get a burst of strength. It's a gift from God, I guess. So they can finish their business.

Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?

The sound of the ice cream churning outside sounds like bones crunching.

To say I have frizzy hair is an understatement. It is kinky, more pubic than cranial, and whitish blond, breaking off easily, like hay.

That white uniform was her 'pass' to get into white places with us - the grocery store, the state fair, the movies. Even though this was the 70s and the segregation laws had changed, the 'rules' had not.

I'm tired of the rules," I say.

Well,
" I took a deep breath,
"I'd like to write this showing
the point of view of the help.
The colored women down
here." I tried to picture
Constantine's face, Aibileen's.
"They raise a white child and
then twenty years later the
child becomes the employer.
It's that irony, that we love
them and they love us, yet . .
." I swallowed, my voice
trembling. "We don't even
allow them to use the toilet in
the house.

Once upon a time they was two girls," I say. "one girl had black skin, one girl had white."
Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening.
"Little colored girl say to little white girl, 'How come your skin be so pale?' White girl say, 'I don't know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?'
"But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, 'Well, let's see. You got hair, I got hair.'"I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head.
"Little colored girl say 'I got a nose, you got a nose.'"I gives her little snout a tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me.
"Little white girl say, 'I got toes, you got toes.' And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can't get to mine cause I got my white work shoes on.
"'So we's the same. Just a different color', say that little colored girl. The little white girl she agreed and they was friends. The End."
Baby Girl just look at me. Law, that was a sorry story if I ever heard one. Wasn't even no plot to it. But Mae Mobley, she smile and say, "Tell it again.

They say it's like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime.

I'm starting to hate the whiny teenage songs about love and nothing.

Here's to new beginnings, Stuart says and raises his bourbon. I nod, sort of wanting to tell him that all beginnings are new.

It's already 95 degrees outside. Mississippi got the most unorganized weather in the nation.

I grew up in the 1970s, but I don't think a whole lot had changed from the '60s. Oh, it had changed in the law books - but not in the kitchens of white homes.

I tell myself that's what you get when you put thirty-one toilets on the most popular girl's front yard. People tend to treat you a little differently than before.

I'm pretty sure I can say that no one in my family ever asked Demetrie what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family. It never occurred to us to ask. It was everyday life. It wasn't something people felt compelled to examine.
I have wished, for many years, that I'd been old enough and thoughtful enough to ask Demetrie that question. She died when I was sixteen. I've spent years imagining what her answer would be. And that is why I wrote this book.

Week after Clyde left you I heard that Cocoa wake up to her cootchie spoilt like a rotten oyster. Didn't get better for three months. Bertrina she good friends with Cocoa She knows your prayer works.

Stuart stands and says, 'Come here,' and he's on my side of the room in one stride and he claps my hands to his hips and kisses my mouth like I am the drink he's been dying for all day and I've heard girls say it's like melting, that feeling. But I think it's like rising, growing even taller and seeing sights over a hedge, colors you've never seen before.

Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.

We ain't doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.

I am not spending my final days in a hospital, nor will I turn my own house into one." Doctor

What should we do about it?" asks Miss Celia.
We. God forgive me, but I wish there wasn't a "we" mixed up in this. (Minny)

Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too.

Bosoms," she announces, with a hand to her own, "are for bedrooms and breastfeeding. Not for occasions with dignity."
"Well, what do you want her to do, Eleanor? Leave them at home?

I've never been happier in my whole life.
I leave it at that. Underneath all that happy, she sure doesn't look happy.

She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.

Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.

Out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body-my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

Cokes at Phi Delta Theta parties and

We go on in her room, where we like to set. I get up in the big chair and she get up on me and smile, bounce a little. "Tell me bout the brown wrapping. And the present." She so excited, she squirming. She has to jump off my lap, squirm a little to get it out. Then she crawl back up.
That's her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole's Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain't the color a the wrapping that count, it's what we is inside.

As I wrote, I found that Aibileen had some things to say that really weren't in her character. She was older, soft-spoken, and she started showing some attitude.

I don't regret it, but I don't feel quite as lucky anymore.

It seems like at some point you'd run out of awful.

I may not remember my name or what country I live in, but you and that pie is something I will never forget.

And if your friends make fun of you for chasing your dream, remember - just lie.

I'm a Southerner - I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve.

But after Mr. Evers got shot a week ago, lot a colored folk is frustrated in this town. Especially the younger ones, who ain't built up a callus yet.

What you learn today?" I ask even though she ain't in real school, just the pretend kind. Other day, when I ask her, she say, "Pilgrims. They came over and nothing would grow so they ate the Indians."
Now knew them Pilgrims didn't eat no Indians. But that ain't the point.

kids in my lifetime. I know how

It smells like grade school - boredom, paste, Lysoled vomit. I

I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would've been Constantine's voice singing. If singing was a color, it would've been the color of that chocolate.

I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality ...

I used to believe in em (lines). I don't anymore. They in our heads. Lines between black and white ain't there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.

She dumb." I sigh. "But she ain't stupid.

Demetrie came to wait on my grandmother in 1955 and stayed for 32 years. It was common, in Mississippi, to have a black domestic cleaning the kitchen, cooking the meals, looking after the white children.

It's mighty strange, without a doubt Nobody knows you when you're down and out

The point is, I can't tell you how to succeed. But I can tell you how not to: Give in to the shame of being rejected and put your manuscript - or painting, song, voice, dance moves, [insert passion here] - in the coffin that is your bedside drawer and close it for good. I guarantee you that it won't take you anywhere. Or you could do what this writer did: Give in to your obsession instead.

Ugly live up on the inside.

I don't know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain't saying it. And I know she ain't saying what she want a say either and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.

For four days straights, I sit at my typewriter in my bedroom. Twenty of my typed pages, full of slashes and red-circled edits, become thirty-one in thick Strathmore white.

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends

Some things I just got to keep for myself.

I hear Raleigh's new accounting business isn't doing well. Maybe up in New York or somewhere it's a good thing, but in Jackson, Mississippi, people just don't care to do business with a rude, condescending asshole.

Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.

And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.

You kind, you smart, you important.

A course we different! Everybody know colored people and white people ain't the same. But we still just people.

I'd of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Make her own damn man-catching dress.

I've been dropped off in a place I do not belong anymore. Certainly not here with Mother and Daddy, ...

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

I have decided not to die.

Mother says she doesn't need the medication anymore, that the only cure for cancer is having a daughter who won't cut her hair and wears dresses too high above the knee even on a Sunday, because how knows what tackiness I'd do to myself if she died.

When you little, you only get asked two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.

I'd cry, if only I had the time to do it.

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

I do wish that people talked about the subject of race, especially in the South.

She blow em clean over. She suck the grits off the candle and start eating. After while, she smile up at me, say, "How old are you?"
"Aibileen's fifty-three."
Her eyes get real wide. I might as well be a thousand.

They ain't rich folk, that I know. Rich folk don't try so hard. I

He let out a long sorry sigh and I love that look on his face, that disappointment. I understand now why girls resist,just for that sweet look of regret ...

I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites ... I pray that wasn't her moment, Pray I still got time.

No, white women like to keep their hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gonna take they time with em.

Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person.

That's what I love about Aibileen, she can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so small and simple, they'll fit right in your pocket.

Mother calls up the stairs to ask what in the world I'm typing up there all day and I holler down, 'Just typing up some notes from the Bible study. Just writing down all the things I love about Jesus.

Truth.
It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that's been burning me up all my life.
Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.

I've become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town's Boo Radley, just like in To Kill A Mockingbird.

I nursed a worthless, pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life-sucking, daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears in my eyes I'd never marry one. And then I did.

He moves closer and leans down so I will look at him. And I feel sick, literally nauseated by the smell of bourbon on his breath. And yet I still want to fold myself up and put my entire body in his arms. I am loving him and hating him at the same time.

It's alive and well everywhere. Native Americans get a lot of crap in the West and south west. Muslims get treated like crap in just about every country in the Western world lately. Black people are mistreated in some parts of the US still. There are black people who are racist against white people. I've recently encountered someone who decided they couldn't tolerate my presence because I'm catholic, which according them makes me a pedophile, Satan worshipper and a whore.

I've even encountered discrimination from people over seas for being American. Especially with my cousin's friends from England. They were rude to me the entire visit. They thought that I had to be an ignorant, xenophobic, racist slob just because I was from America and they spent most of the time trying to pick a fight with me to prove it.

Racism exists, but don't take the comments you read online seriously. A good 80-90% of those are trolls looking for attention or a bored teenager who thinks it's funny to be an idiot.

And I know there are plenty of other "colored" things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon's meetings- the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate. But truth is, I don't care that much about voting. I don't care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.

I shake my head at my friend. "Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn." Aibileen shakes her head. "I used to believe in em. I don't anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain't.

She's got so many azalea bushes, her yard's going to look like Gone With the Wind come spring. I don't like azaleas and I sure didn't like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party. If I'd played Mammy, I'd of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Maker her own damn man-catching dress.

For a minute, we're just two people wondering why things are the way they are.

[Crisco] ain't just for frying. You ever get a sticky something stuck in your hair,like gum? ... That's right, Crisco. Spread this on a baby's bottom, you won't even know what diaper rash is ... shoot, I seen ladies rub it under they eyes and on they husband's scaly feet ... Clean the goo from a price tag, take the squeak out a door hinge. Lights get cut off, stick a wick in it and burn it like a candle ... And after all that, it'll still fry your chicken.

There is nothing else to say, so I just murmur, "I know. Thank you for the chance." And I add, "Merry Christmas, Missus Stein."
"We call it Hanukkah, but thank you, Miss Phelan.

Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.

By the time she a year old Mae Mobley following me around everwhere I go ... .Miss Leefolt, she'd narrow up her eyes at me like I done something wrong, unhitch that crying baby off my foot. I reckon that's the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns

Things ain't never gone change in this town , Aibileen. We living in hell. Our kids is trapped.

We done something brave and good here ... Maybe [we] don't want to be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad.

But Miss Celia the way she stares at me with those big eyes like I'm the best thing since hairspray in a can, I almost rather she'd order me around like she supposed to.

And you call yourself a Christian,' were Hilly's words to me and I thought, God. When did I ever do that?

Now I had babies confuse before. John Green Dudley, first word out a that boy's mouth was Mama and he was looking straight at me. But then pretty soon he calling everybody including hisself Mama and calling his daddy Mama too ... Nobody worry bout it. Course when he start playing dress-up in his sister's Jewel Taylor twirl skirts and wearing Chanel No. 5, we all get a little concern.

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, 'Look how far we've come,' because we hadn't come very far, to say the least. Although Jackson's population was half white and half black, I didn't have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

You is smart, you is kind and you is important. From the book/movie "The Help

Rich folk don't try so hard

Why don't we just build you an house outside Hilly?

I set her on her wooden baby seat so her little hiney don't fall in and soon as I turn my back, she off that pot running.

All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.