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.

The first time I was ever called ugly, I was thirteen. It was a rich friend of my brother Carlton’s over to shoot guns in the field.’Why you crying, girl?’ Constantine asked me in the...

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

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...

It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.

I worked for Miss Margaret thirty-eight years. She had her a baby girl with the colic and the only thing that stopped the hurting was to hold her. So I made me a wrap. I...

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.

Cause that’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going.

Rich folk don’t try so hard

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.

No one tells us, girls who don’t go on dates, that remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens.

Eres buena, eres lista, eres importante.

…and that’s when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?

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...

I looked after that Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that...

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...

I was surprise to see the world didn’t stop just cause my boy did.

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.

We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.

Stuart needs “space” and “time,” as if this were physics and not a human relationship.

You’re gon’ have to say to your self, am I gon’ believe what them fools say about me today?

Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious

All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.

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...

I used to believe in ’em [lines]. 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.” – Aibileen

they say it’s like true love, good help. you only get one in a lifetime…..there is so much you don’t know about a person. i wonder if i could’ve made her days a little bit...

Today I’m on tell you bout a man from outer space.” She just loves hearing about peoples from outer space. Her favorite show on the tee-vee is My Favorite Martian, I pull on my antennae...

I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close. And I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine, and a gorgeous shade of toast. The stiff blond hairs on...

Kindness don’t have no boundaries.

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.

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....

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...

He needs “space” and “time,” as if this were physics and not a human relationship.

it always sound scarier when a hollerer talk soft.

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.