Here's the thing, say Shut. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifests itself even if you're not looking, or don't know what you're looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I AST. Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a. But what does it look like? I AST. Don't look like anything, she says. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shut. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It. Shug a beautiful something, let me tell you. She frowns a little, look out cross the yard, lean back in her chair, look like a big rose. She says, My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it comes to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed, and I cried, and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happens, you can't miss it. It sort of like you know what, she says, grinning and rubbing high up on my thigh. Shug! I say. Oh, she says. God love all them feelings. That's some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves 'em you enjoys 'em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that's going, and praise God by liking what you like. God don't think it dirty? I AST. Naw, she says. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love? And a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. You saying God vain? I AST. Naw, she says. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. What it does when it pissed off? I AST. Oh, it makes something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. Yeah? I say. Yeah, she says. It's always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect. You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say. Yes, Celia, she says. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I have been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it does that?) not the color purple (where it comes from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing. Now that my eyes opening, I feel like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ____s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shut say, You have to get man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall. Man corrupt everything, say Shut. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He tries to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you're trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shut. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock. But this hard work, let me tell you. He has been there so long, he doesn't want to budge. He threatens lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it. Amen

— Alice Walker

He says, Celia, tell me the truth. You don't like me because I'm a man? I blow my nose. Take off they pant, I say, and men look like frogs to me. No matter how you kiss 'em, as far as I'm concern, frogs is what they stay.

— Alice Walker

Hope to sin only in the service of waking up.

— Alice Walker

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

— Alice Walker

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

— Alice Walker

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

— Alice Walker

I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is.

— Alice Walker

I believe that the truth of any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together.

— Alice Walker

I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. Furthermore, I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it that's my religion.

— Alice Walker

I don't know who tried to teach him what to do in the bedroom, but it must have been a furniture salesman.

— Alice Walker