I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.

Eventually I knew what hair wanted; it wanted to be itself ... to be left alone by anyone, including me, who did not love it as it was.

I'm the most stubborn person I know.

Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance.

Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.

You die - and this is why manmade religions don't work for so many of us. The notion that you're dead and that's the end, and they even try to contain you in coffins. They make them out of steel and stuff. But really, your journey - for all you know - is just beginning. For all I know, what you see now is just a tiny little seed. So, I may blossom into an entire - I don't know - something in the sky. Who knows where we're going?

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.