Click on the links below to read information on the key quotations for . . .
Below are the ten most important quotations from the first fifteen letters
in the novel. Learning, knowing and having the ability to recall important
quotations in an AS Level examination puts you in an advantageous
position, as it saves you the time of having to search through the book in
attempt to find a relevant reference.
"I am I have always been a good girl"
Letter 1, Celie implores God to give her a sign in order that she
may know her fate.
"A girl at church say you git big if you bleed every month. I don’t
bleed no more."
Letter 5, Celie’s deadness is explored as she tries to protect
Nettie from the same.
"And now when I dream, I dream of Shug Avery. She be dress to
kill, whirling and laughing."
Letter 6, Celie realises that some women are not poor, beaten and
ugly.
"I know what he doing to me he done to Shug Avery and maybe she
like it. I put my arm around him."
Letter 9, through her pain Celie looks to emulate her role model,
Shug Avery.
"My little girl she look up and sort of frown. She fretting over
something. She got my eyes just like they is today. Like everything I
seen, she seen, and she pondering on it."
Letter 10, Celie finds her lost child but does not feel jealous of
"her new mammy."
"You got to fight. You got to fight.
But I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive."
Letter 11, Celie over-run and beaten by both Mr. _______ physically
and his children emotionally, subjugates herself to the wishes of both.
"I say, Write.
She say, Nothing but death can keep me from it."
Letter 11, so begins the bond that lasts until the end of the
novel, though we later find that Mr. ________ has been hiding Nettie’s
letters for many years.
"When a woman marry she spose to keep a decent house and a clean
family."
Letter 12, Carrie’s attitudes towards a woman’s domestic role
are not those shared by the other females in the novel.
"I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree."
Letter 13, Celie, already sexually sterile is now emotionally
barren.
"What she wear? Is she the same old Shug, like the one in my
picture? How her hair is? What kind lipstick? Wig? She stout? She skinny?
She sound well? Tired? Sick?"
Letter 15, Celie is fascinated with Shug after Mr. _______ attends
her return at the Lucky Star.
Written by Matthew Kane [2001]
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