Top 160 Kathryn Stockett Quotes (2023 Update)
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51. “I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constantine’s voice singing. If singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.”

— Kathryn Stockett

52. “I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we’ve come.”

— Kathryn Stockett

53. “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

54. “And you call yourself a Christian,? were Hilly’s words to me and I thought, God. When did I ever do that?”

— Kathryn Stockett

55. “I’ve become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town’s Boo Radley, just like in To Kill A Mockingbird.”

— Kathryn Stockett

56. “But after Mr. Evers got shot a week ago, lot a colored folk is frustrated in this town. Especially the younger ones, who ain’t built up a callus yet.”

— Kathryn Stockett

57. “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

58. “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

59. “She’s got so many azalea bushes, her yard’s going to look like Gone With the Wind come spring. I don’t like azaleas and I sure didn’t like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party. If I’d played Mammy, I’d of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Maker her own damn man-catching dress.”

— Kathryn Stockett

60. “Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.”

— Kathryn Stockett

61. “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.”

— Kathryn Stockett

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

— Kathryn Stockett

63. “It’s already 95 degrees outside. Mississippi got the most unorganized weather in the nation.”

— Kathryn Stockett

64. “Who knew heartbreak would be so goddamn hot.”

— Kathryn Stockett

65. “At one O’Clock, Miss Celia comes in the kitchen and says she’s ready for her first cooking lesson. She settles on a stool. She’s wearing a tight red sweater and a red skirt and enough makeup to scare a hooker.”

— Kathryn Stockett

66. “I nursed a worthless, pint drinker for twelve years and when my lazy, life-sucking, daddy finally died, I swore to God with tears in my eyes I’d never marry one. And then I did.”

— Kathryn Stockett

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

— Kathryn Stockett

68. “I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.”

— Kathryn Stockett

69. “Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?”

— Kathryn Stockett

70. “Womens, they ain’t like men. A woman ain’t gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn’t pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn’t come burn my house down. No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set of tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.”

— Kathryn Stockett

71. “Bosoms are for bedrooms and breastfeeding.”

— Kathryn Stockett

72. “I grew up in the 1970s, but I don’t think a whole lot had changed from the ’60s. Oh, it had changed in the law books – but not in the kitchens of white homes.”

— Kathryn Stockett

73. “When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.”

— Kathryn Stockett

74. “I reckon that’s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns.”

— Kathryn Stockett

75. “She hug me around my neck, say, “You’re righter than Miss Taylor.” I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me.”

— Kathryn Stockett

76. “Only three things them ladies talk about: they kids, they clothes, and they friends. I hear the word Kennedy, I know they ain’t discussing no politic. They talking about what Miss Jackie done wore on the tee-vee.”

— Kathryn Stockett

77. “Sanitation Initiative,” Miss Hilly say. “As a disease-preventative measure.” I’m surprised by how.”

— Kathryn Stockett

78. “Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody’s business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems, you don’t go crying to her with yours – you can’t pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don’t want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me?”

— Kathryn Stockett

79. “Down in the national news section, there’s an article on a new pill, the ‘Valium’ they’re calling it, ‘to help women cope with everyday challenges.’ God, I could use about ten of those little pills right now.”

— Kathryn Stockett

80. “If singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.”

— Kathryn Stockett

81. “She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don’t hate much in life, but me and that dress is not on good terms.”

— Kathryn Stockett

82. “I feel like I’m selling something nobody want to buy. Something big and stinky, like Kiki Brown and her lemon smell-good polish. But what really makes me and Kiki the same is, I’m proud a what I’m selling. I can’t help it. We telling stories that need to be told.”

— Kathryn Stockett

83. “Some readers tell me, ‘We always treated our maid like she was a member of the family.’ You know, that’s interesting, but I wonder what your maid’s perspective was on that.”

— Kathryn Stockett

84. “Cause everbody care. Black, white, deep down we all do.”

— Kathryn Stockett

85. “And I know there are plenty of other “colored” things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon’s meetings- the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate. But truth is, I don’t care that much about voting. I don’t care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.”

— Kathryn Stockett

86. “Be the prettiest book I ever seen. The cover is pale blue, color a the sky. And a big white bird – a peace dove – spreads its wings from end to end.”

— Kathryn Stockett

87. “Maybe I ain’t too old to start over, I think and I laugh and cry at the same time at this. Cause just last night I thought I was finished with everything new.”

— Kathryn Stockett

88. “I think about how no one in the car would come out and say it. We all know about these laws, we live here, but we don’t talk about them. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them written down.”

— Kathryn Stockett

89. “Im a Southerner – I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve.”

— Kathryn Stockett

90. “Having a separate bathroom for the black domestic was just the way things were done. It had faded out in new homes by the time the ’70s and ’80s rolled up.”

— Kathryn Stockett

91. “Even though he is asking to be my husband, I don’t know him enough to trust him completely.”

— Kathryn Stockett

92. “If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constantine’s voice singing. If singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.”

— Kathryn Stockett

93. “There is so much you don’t know about a person. I wonder if I could’ve made her days a little bit easier, if I’d tried. If I’d treated her a little nicer. 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

94. “Someone whose eyes simply said, without words, You are fine with me.”

— Kathryn Stockett

95. “Kindness don’t have no boundaries.”

— Kathryn Stockett

96. “President Kennedy’s assassination, less than two weeks ago, has struck the world dumb. It’s like no one wants to be the first to break the silence. Nothing seems important.”

— Kathryn Stockett

97. “Truth. It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life.”

— Kathryn Stockett

98. “Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.”

— Kathryn Stockett

99. “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 when I understood what shame was and the color of it too. 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

100. “It’s mighty strange, without a doubt Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.”

— Kathryn Stockett