Quotes
Aibileen Clark: You is kind. You is smart. You is important.
Share thisCharlotte Phelan: Your eggs are dying. Would it kill you to go on a date?
Share thisAibileen Clark: 18 people were killed in Jackson that night. 10 white and 8 black. I don't think God has color in mind when he sets a tornado loose.
Share thisPreacher Green: If you can love your enemy, you already have victory.
Share thisAibileen Clark: I ain't never had no white person in my house before.
Share thisStuart Whitworth: Isn't that what all you girls from Ole Miss major in - professional husband hunting?
Share thisMinny Jackson: Fried chicken just tend to make you feel better about life.
Share thisCharlotte Phelan: Courage sometimes skips a generation. Thank you for bringing it back to our family.
Share thisMinny Jackson: Minny don't burn fried chicken.
Share thisCelia Foote: They don't like me because of what they think I did.
Minny Jackson: They don't like you 'cause they think you white trash.
Share thisMae Mobley: You my real mama, Aibi.
Share thisCharlotte Phelan: Love and hate are two horns on the same goat, Eugenia. And you need a goat.
Share thisElizabeth Leefolt: [after Mae Mobley has used a toilet dropped on Hilly's lawn, Elizabeth pulls her off and spanks her; crying sounds are heard offscreen] You will get a disease from those toilets!
Share thisMinny Jackson: Eat my shit.
Hilly Holbrook: Excuse me!
Minny Jackson: I said eat... my... shit.
Hilly Holbrook: Have you lost your mind?
Minny Jackson: No, ma'am but you is about to. 'Cause you just did.
Share thisCharlotte Phelan: Get your raggedy ass off my porch.
Share thisAibileen Clark: Mrs. Leefolt should not be having babies. Put that in the book.
Share this[first lines]
Aibileen Clark: I was born 1911, Chicksaw County, Piedmont Plantation.
Woman: And did you know as a girl growing up that one day you'd be a maid?
Aibileen Clark: Yes ma'am, I did.
Woman: And you knew that because...
Aibileen Clark: My mama was a maid. My grandmama was a house slave.
Woman: [whispering as she writes down] "house slave..." Did you ever dream of being something else?
Aibileen Clark: [nods yes]
Woman: What does it feel like to raise a white child when your own child's at home being looked after by somebody else?
Share thisMr. Blackly: I guarantee you, one day they're going to figure out cigarettes will kill you.
Share thisAibileen Clark: Miss Leefolt got so much hairspray on her head, she gonna blow us allup if she light a cigarette.
Share thisConstantine Jefferson: [to Eugenia] Every day you're not dead in the ground, when you wake up in the morning, you're gonna have to make some decisions. Got to ask yourself this question: "Am I gonna believe all them bad things them fools say about me today?" You hear me today? "Am I gonna believe all them bad things them fools say about me today? You hear me today?" All right? As for your mama, she didn't pick her life. It picked her. But you, you're gonna do something big with yours. You wait and see.
Share thisStuart Whitworth: I've never met a woman that says exactly what she's thinking.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Well, I got plenty to say.
Share thisEugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Oysters are a vehicle for crackers and ketchup.
Share thisMissus Walters: I may ave trouble remembering my own name, or what country I live in, but there are two things I can't seem to forget: that my own daughter threw me into a nursing home, and that she ate Minny's shit.
Share thisHilly Holbrook: [check from Celia Foote] Pay to the order of: Two Slice Hilly, $200.00.
[tears it up]
Share thisCharlotte Phelan: You know Hilly, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you've been eating too much *pie*.
Share thisMinny Jackson: I can't let you eat anymore cornpone. Mr. Johnny.
Johnny Foote: Well, thanks to you, now I've have to let out every pair of pants I own.
Share thisMinny Jackson: [to Skeeter] You ain't got nothing left here but enemies in the Junior League. You done burned every bridge there is. And you ain't never gonna get another man in this town, everybody know that. So don't walk your white butt to New York, run it!
Share thisHilly Holbrook: Maybe I can't send you to jail for what you wrote, but I can send you for being a thief.
Aibileen Clark: I know something about you. Don't you forget that. From what Yule Mae says, there's a lot of time to write letters in jail. Plenty of time to write the truth about you. And the paper is free.
Hilly Holbrook: Nobody will believe what you wrote!
Aibileen Clark: I don't know. I been told I'm a pretty good writer, already sold a lot of books!
Share thisAibileen Clark: [to Hilly] All you do is scare and lie to try and get what you want.
Share this[last lines]
Aibileen Clark: In just ten minutes, the only life I knew was done.
Mae Mobley: [calling after her through the window] A-a-a-aibee!
Aibileen Clark: God says we need to love our enemies. It hard to do. But it can start by telling the truth. No one had ever asked me what it feel like to be me. Once I told the truth about that, I felt free. And I got to thinking about all the people I know. And the things I seen and done. My boy Trelaw always said we gonna have a writer in the family one day. I guess it's gonna be me.
Share thisHilly Holbrook: They carry different diseases than we do. That's why I've drafted the Home Health Sanitation Initiative.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: The what?
Hilly Holbrook: A disease-preventative bill that requires every white home to have a separate bathroom for the colored help. It's been endorsed by the White Citizen's Council.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Maybe we should just build you a bathroom outside, Hilly.
Share thisHilly Holbrook: I said *coats*, not *commodes*!
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