Top 160 Kathryn Stockett Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You are kind. You are smart. You are important.”

— Kathryn Stockett

Featured in: Self-Esteem Quotes, Care Quotes, Compassion Quotes, Character Quotes, Quotes About Children

2. “I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.”

— Kathryn Stockett

3. “You kind, you smart, you important.”

— Kathryn Stockett

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

— Kathryn Stockett

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

— Kathryn Stockett

6. “It seems like at some point you’d run out of awful.”

— Kathryn Stockett

7. “They say it’s like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime.”

— Kathryn Stockett

8. “Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”

— Kathryn Stockett

9. “I have decided not to die.”

— Kathryn Stockett

10. “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

11. “Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother.”

— Kathryn Stockett

12. “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

13. “This woman talk like she from so deep in the country she got corn growing in her shoes.”

— Kathryn Stockett

14. “Rich folk don’t try so hard.”

— Kathryn Stockett

15. “Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.” Thinking.”

— Kathryn Stockett

16. “Look around, investigate, and write. Don’t waste your time on the obvious things. Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”

— Kathryn Stockett

17. “I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality...”

— Kathryn Stockett

18. “It’s Tuesday, change-the-damn-sheets day. If I don’t do it today, that makes Wednesday change-the-damn-sheets day too.”

— Kathryn Stockett

19. “Courage sometimes skips a generation. Thank you for bringing it back to our family.”

— Kathryn Stockett

20. “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.”

— Kathryn Stockett

21. “That’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going.”

— Kathryn Stockett

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

— Kathryn Stockett

Featured in: Breakup Quotes

23. “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 Stockett

24. “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.”

— Kathryn Stockett

25. “Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person.”

— Kathryn Stockett

26. “I’d cry, if only I had the time to do it.”

— Kathryn Stockett

27. “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 Stockett

28. “You got nothing left here but enemies in the Junior League and a mama that’s gonna drive you to drink. You done burned ever bridge there is. And you ain’t never gone get another boyfriend in this town and everbody know it. So don’t walk your white butt to New York, run it.”

— Kathryn Stockett

29. “Great books give you a feeling that you miss all day, until you finally get to crawl back inside those pages again.”

— Kathryn Stockett

30. “That was the day my whole world went black. Air look black, sun look black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls a my house.”

— Kathryn Stockett

31. “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

32. “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

33. “She’s wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.”

— Kathryn Stockett

34. “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.”

— Kathryn Stockett

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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

38. “Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision.” Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. “You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”

— Kathryn Stockett

39. “Why don’t we just build you an house outside Hilly?”

— Kathryn Stockett

40. “I get so mad at myself for being so weak! How can I love a man who beats me raw? Why do I love a fool drinker? One time I asked him, “Why? Why are you hitting me?” He leaned down and looked me right in the face. “If I didn’t hit you, Minny, who knows what you become.” I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about it. Who knows what I could become, if Leroy would stop goddamn hitting me.”

— Kathryn Stockett

41. “Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.”

— Kathryn Stockett

42. “Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.”

— Kathryn Stockett

43. “I like telling my stories. It feels like I’m doing something about it. When I leave, the concrete in my chest has loosened, melted down so I can breathe for a few days.”

— Kathryn Stockett

44. “I don’t know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain’t saying it. And I know she ain’t saying what she want a say either and it’s a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.”

— Kathryn Stockett

45. “Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.”

— Kathryn Stockett

46. “And if your friends make fun of you for chasing your dream, remember – just lie.”

— Kathryn Stockett

47. “They ain’t rich folk, that I know. Rich folk don’t try so hard. I.”

— Kathryn Stockett

48. “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.”

— Kathryn Stockett

49. “I’m sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?”

— Kathryn Stockett

50. “I put the iron down real slow, feel that bitter seed grow in my chest, the one planted after Treelore died. My face goes hot, my tongue twitchy. I don’t know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain’t saying it. And I know she ain’t saying what she want a say either and it’s a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.”

— Kathryn Stockett