ALICE WALKER, THE COLOR PURPLE
OWEN ROBINSON
LECTURE QUOTES
I thank everybody in this book for coming.
A.W., author and medium
Dear Celie,
I wrote a letter to you almost every day on the ship coming to
Africa. But by the time we docked I was so down, I tore them into
little pieces and dropped them into the water. Albert is not going to
let you have my letters and so what use is there in writing them.
That’s the way I felt when I tore them up and sent them to you on
the waves. But now I feel different.
I 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…
…Your sister, Nettie
(p.110)
Dear God,
I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl.
Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening
to me.
(p.3)
‘The word in living conversation is directly, blatantly, oriented
towards a future answer-word: it provokes an answer, anticipates it
and structures itself in the answer’s direction. Forming itself in an
atmosphere of the already spoken, the word is at the same time
determined by that which has not yet been said but which is
needed and in fact anticipated by the answering word. Such is the
situation in any living dialogue.’ (Bakhtin)
Dear God,
That’s it, say Shug. Pack your stuff. You coming back to
Tennessee with me.
But I feels daze.
My Daddy lynch. My mama crazy. All my little half-brothers and
sisters no kin to me. My children not my sister and brother. Pa not
pa.
You must be sleep.
(p.151)
Dear Celie, the first letter say,
You’ve got to fight and get away from Albert. He ain’t no good.
When I left you all’s house, walking, he followed me on his
horse…
…love,
Nettie
(p.107)
He laugh. Who you think you is? He say. You can’t curse
nobody. Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a
woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all.
Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream
about will fail. I give it to him straight, just like it come to me. And
it seem to come to me from the trees.
Whoever heard of such a thing, say Mr.___. I probably didn’t
whup your ass enough.
Every lick you hit me you will suffer twice, I say. Then I say,
You better stop talking because all I’m telling you ain’t coming just
from me. Look like when I open my mouth the air rush in and
shape words.
Shit, he say. I should have lock you up. Just let you out to
work.
The jail you plan for me is the one in which you will rot, I say.
Shug come over to where us talking. She take one look at my
face and say Celie! Then she turn to Mr.___. Stop Albert, she
say. Don’t say no more. You just going to make it harder on
yourself.
I’ll fix her wagon! Say Mr.____, and spring toward me.
A dust devil flew up on the porch between us, fill my mouth with
dirt. The dirt say, Anything you do to me, already done to you.
Then I feel Shug shake me. Celie, she say. And I come to
myself.
I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to
everything listening. But I’m here.
Amen, say Shug. Amen, amen.
(p.176)