Stockett Quotes

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Never give up. The same manuscript may appeal to one agent and not to another. It's a matter of taste, and it's all about the writing.

What if I had give up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60?

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 - in the coffin that is your bedside drawer and close it for good. I guarantee you that it won't take you anywhere. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

I feel like I'm selling something nobody want to buy. Something big and stinky, like Kiki Brown and her lemon smell-good polish. But what really makes me and Kiki the same is, I'm proud a what I'm selling. I can't help it. We telling stories that need to be told. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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) ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

I want to read what you're thinking. I'm pretty sure it's not about housekeeping. ~ Kathryn Stockett

I come home that morning, after I been fired, and stood outside my house with my new work shoes on. The shoes my mama paid a month's worth a light bill for. I guess that's when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Down in the national news section, there's an article on a new pill, the 'Valium' they're calling it, 'to help women cope with everyday challenges.' God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

It's Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don't do it today, that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Cokes at Phi Delta Theta parties and ~ Kathryn Stockett

[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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

I choke then. The tears roll down. It's all them white peoples that breaks me, standing around the colored neighborhood. White peoples with guns, pointed at colored peoples. Cause who gone protect our peoples? Ain't no colored policemans. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Don't you let him cheapen you. ~ Kathyrn Stockett

I'm tired of the rules," I say. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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 ~ Kathryn Stockett

Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody's business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady's problems, you don't go crying to her with yours - you can't pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don't want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me? ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

When he has disappeared, Mother clears her throat. I don't turn around and look at her in the rocking chair. I don't want her to see the disappointment in my face that he's gone.
"Go ahead, Mother," I finally mutter. "Say what you want to say."
"Don't you let him cheapen you."
I look back at her, eye her suspiciously, even though she is so frail under the wool blanket. Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.
"If Stuart doesn't know how intelligent and kind I raised you to be, he can march straight on back to State Street." She narrows her eyes at the winter land. "Frankly, I don't care much for Stuart. He doesn't know how lucky he was to have you. ~ Kathyrn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Some things I just got to keep for myself. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Tonight, I'll strip off all this armor and let it be as it was before.. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don't know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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

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

Courage sometimes skips a generation. Thank you for bringing it back to our family. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning. ~ Kathryn Stockett

It's so hot, Mister Dunn's rooster walks in my door and squats his red self right in front of my kitchen fan. I come in to find him looking at me like 'I ain't moving nowhere, lady ~ Kathryn Stockett

She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Miss Taylor says kids that are colored can't go to my school cause they're not smart enough." I come round the counter then. Lift her chin up and smooth back her funny-looking hair. "You think I'm dumb?" "No," she whispers hard, like she means it so much. She look sorry she said it. "What that tell you about Miss Taylor, then?" She blink, like she listening good. "Means Miss Taylor ain't right all the time," I say. She hug me around my neck, say, "You're righter than Miss Taylor." I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me. ~ Kathyrn Stockett

Which means I have to lie to her on a daily basis, which is in itself enjoyable but a little degrading at the same time ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

Hilly raises her voice about three octaves higher when she talks to coloured people. Elizabeth smiles like she's talking to a child, although certainly not her own. I am starting to notice things. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

kids in my lifetime. I know how ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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

She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don't hate much in life, but me and that dress is not on good terms. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

I used to be a good fighter." She looks out along the boxwoods, wipes off her sweat with her palm. "If you'd known me ten years ago..."
She's got no goo on her face, her hair's not sprayed, her nightgown's like an old prairie dress. She takes a deep breath through her nose and I see it. I see the white-trash girl she was ten years ago. She was strong. She didn't take no shit from nobody. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

I slip off my flats and walk down the front porch steps, while Mother calls out for me to put my shoes back on, threatening ringworm, mosquito, encephalitis. The inevitability of death by no shoes. Death by no husband. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

We all on a party line to God... ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

THE HOUSE straightened up and then go on and fix some of that chicken salad now, say Miss Leefolt. It's bridge club day. Every fourth Wednesday a the month. A course I already got everthing ready to go - made the chicken salad this morning, ironed the tablecloths yesterday. Miss Leefolt seen me at it too. She ain't but twenty-three years old and she like hearing herself tell me what to do. She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don't hate much in life, ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

On the one hand I wonder, Was this really my story to tell? On the other hand, I just wanted the story to be told. But the truth is that I didn't think anybody was going to read it. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Ugly live up on the inside. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

We look at each other a second. " I'm tired of the rules," I say. Aibileen chuckles and looks out the window. I realise how thin this revelation must sound to her. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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 ~ Kathryn Stockett

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

But Lou Anne, she understood the point of the book before she even read it. The one who was missing the point this time was me. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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. ~ Kathryn Stockett

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

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

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