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.

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?

They say it's like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime.

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.

It seems like at some point you'd run out of awful.

The day your child says she hates you, and every child will go through the phase, it kicks like a foot in the stomach.

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends