Kathryn Stockett quotes
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“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 StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.438, Penguin
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“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.82, Penguin
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“I have decided not to die.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.81, Penguin
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“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?”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“....I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.73, Penguin
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“...and that's when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.103, Penguin
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“Oh, it was delicious to have someone to keep secrets with. If I'd had a sister or a brother closer in age, I guessed that's what it would be like. But it wasn't just smoking or skirting around Mother. It was having someone look at you after your mother has nearly fretted herself to death because you are freakishly tall and frizzy and odd. Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.75, Penguin
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“That was the day my whole world went black. Air looked black. Sun looked black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls of my house….Took three months before I even looked out the window, see the world still there. I was surprised to see the world didn’t stop.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.363, Penguin
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“Cause everbody care. Black, white, deep down we all do.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“I started writing it the day after Sept. 11. I was living in New York City. We didnt have any phone service and we didnt have any mail. Like a lot of writers do, I started to write in a voice that I missed.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“Im a Southerner - I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“Who knew heartbreak would be so ***** hot.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“Bosoms are for bedrooms and breastfeeding.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“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 -
“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 -
“President Kennedy’s assassination, less than two weeks ago, has struck the world dumb. It’s like no one wants to be the first to break the silence. Nothing seems important.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“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 -
“Because ain’t that white people for you, wondering if they are happy enough.”
-- 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 -
“...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 StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.183, Penguin
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“She dumb.†I sigh. “But she ain’t stupid.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“It's already 95 degrees outside. Mississippi got the most unorganized weather in the nation.”
-- 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 -
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“This woman talk like she from so deep in the country she got corn growing in her shoes.”
-- 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.”
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“I wash my hands, wonder how an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you'd just run out of awful.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“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....”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“You're gon' have to say to your self, am I gon' believe what them fools say about me today?”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“Miss Celia stares down into the pot like she's looking for her future. "Are you happy, Minny?" "Why you ask me funny questions like that?" "But are you?" "Course I's happy. You happy too. Big house, big yard, husband looking after you." I frown at Miss Celia and I make sure she can see it. Because ain't that white people for you, wondering if they are happy ENOUGH.”
-- 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 -
“Some readers tell me, 'We always treated our maid like she was a member of the family.' You know, that's interesting, but I wonder what your maid's perspective was on that.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of these people as an extension of your mother.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“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.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“Having a separate bathroom for the black domestic was just the way things were done. It had faded out in new homes by the time the '70s and '80s rolled up.”
-- 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 -
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“I reckon that’s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, Look how far weve come, because we hadnt come very far, to say the least. Although Jacksons population was half white and half black, I didnt have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“If singing was a color, it would've been the color of that chocolate.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“It can be really powerful to write something when youre sad.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.374, Penguin
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“And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“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 -
“They say it's like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“Great books give you a feeling that you miss all day, until you finally get to crawl back inside those pages again.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : "The Help". Book by Kathryn Stockett, 2009.
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“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 -
“Why don't we just build you an house outside Hilly?”
-- 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 StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.13, Penguin
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“Only three things them ladies talk about: they kids, they clothes, and they friends. I hear the word Kennedy, I know they ain’t discussing no politic. They talking about what Miss Jackie done wore on the tee-vee.”
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“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.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“Baby Girl," I say. "I need you remember everything I told you. Do you remember what I told you?" She still crying steady, but the hiccups are gone. "To wipe my bottom good when I'm done?" "No, baby, the other one. About who you 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 -
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“I was surprise to see the world didn't stop just cause my boy did.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.12, Penguin
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“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 -
“I'd cry, if only I had the time to do it.”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.371, Penguin
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“Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“And you call yourself a Christian,' were Hilly's words to me and I thought, God. When did I ever do that?”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“Mrs. Charlotte Phelan's Guide to Husband-Hunting, Rule Number One: a pretty, petite girl should accentuate with makeup and good posture. A tall plain one, with a trust fund.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“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.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
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“That's the way prayer do. It's like electricity, it keeps things going.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“That's all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“At one O'Clock, Miss Celia comes in the kitchen and says she's ready for her first cooking lesson. She settles on a stool. She's wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.”
-- Kathryn Stockett -
“There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary...”
-- Kathryn StockettSource : Kathryn Stockett (2011). “The Help”, p.688, Penguin UK
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“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
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