The Help Quotes

“I slip off my flats and walk down the front porch steps, while Mother calls out for me to put my shoes back on, threatening ringworm, mosquito, encephalitis. The inevitability of death by no shoes. Death by no husband.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Why don't we just build you an house outside Hilly?”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“We done something brave and good here....Maybe [we] don't want to be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“How tall are you, Constantine?” I asked, unable to hide my tears.
Constantine narrowed her eyes at me.
“How tall is you?”
“Five-eleven,” I cried. “I’m already taller than the boys’ basketball coach.”
“Well, I’m five-thirteen, so quit feeling sorry for yourself.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“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, The Help

“But Lou Anne, she understood the point of the book before she even read it. The one who was missing the point this time was me.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“No, white women like to keep their hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gonna take they time with em.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“When I started typing her bathroom iniative for the newsletter, typing words like disease and protect yourself and you're welcome! it was like something cracked open inside of me, not unlike a watermelon, cool and soothing sweet. I always thought insanity would be a dark and bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I don't regret it, but I don't feel quite as lucky anymore.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“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, The Help

“Who knew heartbreak would be so goddamn hot.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Tonight, I'll strip off all this armor and let it be as it was before..”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I guess we all get a little snippy when we're not feeling good.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Week after Clyde left you I heard that Cocoa wake up to her cootchie spoilt like a rotten oyster. Didn't get better for three months. Bertrina she good friends with Cocoa She knows your prayer works.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“A course we different! Everybody know colored people and white people ain't the same. But we still just people.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Minny,” I say last Sunday, “why Bertrina ask me to pray for her?”
Minny say, “Rumor is you got some kind a power prayer, gets better results than just the regular variety.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“she clear her throat again and I'm wondering why she telling me all this. I'm the maid, she ain't gone win no friends talking to me.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Cause that’s the way prayer do. It’s like electricity, it keeps things going.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Find I can get my point across a lot better writing them down”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Sure, I dreamed of football dates, buy my real dream was that one day I would write something that people would actually read”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I've been dropped off in a place I do not belong anymore. Certainly not here with Mother and Daddy,...”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“You're the smartest one in the class, Aibileen," she say. "And the only way you're going to keep sharp is to read and write every day.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“You are a beautiful person”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“If I'd played Mammy, I'd of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Make her own damn man-catching dress. -Minny”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.” Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I choke then. The tears roll down. It's all them white peoples that breaks me, standing around the colored neighborhood. White peoples with guns, pointed at colored peoples. Cause who gone protect our peoples? Ain't no colored policemans.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“He moves closer and leans down so I will look at him. And I feel sick, literally nauseated by the smell of bourbon on his breath. And yet I still want to fold myself up and put my entire body in his arms. I am loving him and hating him at the same time.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Miss Skeeter say maybe don't spec nothing at all, that most Southern peoples is "repressed." If they feel something, they might not say a word. Just hold they breath and wait for it to pass, like gas.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“By the time she a year old Mae Mobley following me around everwhere I go….Miss Leefolt, she’d narrow up her eyes at me like I done something wrong, unhitch that crying baby off my foot. I reckon that’s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help