“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.”

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

“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.”

“...and that's when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?”

“Once upon a time they was two girls," I say. "one girl had black skin, one girl had white."Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening."Little colored girl say to little white girl, 'How come your skin...”

“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.”

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't li...”

“I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.”

“Fear is all in the mind”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”

“Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick successio...”

“It wasn't an epidemic yet because no one knew about it.”

“Safety is largely an illusion, and panic knows this.”