Starring: Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, Taraji P. Henson, H.E.R, Halle Bailey, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story: Musical period drama directed by Blitz Bazawule and produced by Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Scott Sanders, and Quincy Jones. The Color Purple (2023) centers on the life-long struggles of Celie (Fantasia Barrino), an African-American woman living in the south during the early 1900s.
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Best Vibrant The Color Purple Quotes
Young Nettie: I’m a tomboy, and I likes to climb trees. I got corns, bunions and blisters. Ain’t nothing pretty about my feet. Now leave me be.
Mister: I wants to ask for your Nettie’s hand. Needs me a wife.
Alfonso: You going to need more than that from what I hear.
Alfonso: [to Mister] I’ll let you have Celie though, for a cow and a couple of eggs. She ugly as homemade sin, but will work hard like a man.
Young Nettie: The devil. He followed me home from school today, and now I can’t get rid of him.
Celie: He sure look nice for a devil.
Young Nettie: Devil always look nice till he start raising hell.
Celie: What’s a loose woman?
Young Nettie: A woman who won’t let no one man tie her down, I suppose.
Celie: That sounds nice. I wants to be a loose woman.
Young Nettie: [referring to Africa] She say our mommas come from queens over there. You know what that means? That means that we royalty.
Alfonso: Celie. Time for you to leave. You marrying Mister.
Celie: Who Mister?
Young Nettie: The devil.
Young Nettie: [to Celie] Don’t let him walk all over you, hear? You keep your head held high. Just like Mama taught us.
Young Nettie: Even if we have to part, you and me…
Celie, Young Nettie: Us have one heart.
Celie: [after Mister throws Nettie out] Nettie! Write me!
Young Nettie: I’ll write you every day. Nothing but death can keep me from it.
Harpo: I’m going to put my foot down!
Sofia: What that foot supposed to do, Harpo? I bet it won’t walk over me.
Big Slim: [as Sofia enters the bar] What’s wrong with you, gal? Can’t you read?
Sofia: “No fighting. No killing. No women.” Whoo-hoo! Yeah, I read what pleases me.
Harpo: This here’s Sofia.
Ol’ Mister: That’s a lot of woman.
Mister: Whose kin are you, gal? You seem like trouble.
Sofia: Oh, no, sir. I’m one of Argus Butler’s daughters. No trouble at all. Just big.
Sofia: Now, I come here out of respect. But if there ain’t none to get, there sure ain’t none to give.
Harpo: Well, maybe I ain’t smart.
Mister: That’s the wisest thing you done ever said.
Celie: Who that singing?
Mister: That’s Shug, the woman I should’ve married.
Sofia: How come you so nice when the rest of Harpo’s kin so mean and surly?
Celie: I don’t know. I figure if I…
Sofia: Maybe you too nice.
Celie: Every woman ain’t the same.
Harpo: [referring to Sofia] I wants her to jump when I say.
Celie: Maybe she ain’t a jumping woman.
Celie: [to Sofia] I jealous of you. You do what I can’t. You fight.
Sofia: I loves Harpo. God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him or anybody beat me.
Mister: Some women you just can’t tame.
Shug Avery: How long you and Albert been a thing?
Celie: Albert?
Shug Avery: Your husband. You trying to tell me you don’t know your own husband’s name?
Celie: I thought his name was Mister.
Shug Avery: Mister ain’t no name. It’s a title. Just another way of saying “master”, if you ask me. That man can’t even stand up to his own daddy, but got everybody calling him “Mister” like he the only one in town.
Shug Avery: [to Celie] How come you don’t laugh none? You know, if you ain’t going to laugh, you need to sell your funny bone. Smile. It’s healthy. Ain’t you got something to make you hop out of bed every morning and just smile?
Shug Avery: He don’t want to see me. He ain’t forgave me for choosing the blues over his religion. Funny thing is, God ain’t never left me. I figure, if God understands why I sings the blues, then maybe one day my pa will.
Shug Avery: I think it pi**es God off if you walk past the color purple and not notice it.
Shug Avery: Oh, everything and everybody wants to be loved. Especially God. That’s why God be in everything.
'When you love what God has made, you is loving God and God is loving you.' – Shug Avery (The Color Purple) Share on X
Celie: I been wondering, if God love me, then why he take my babies? And why he take my Nettie?
Shug Avery: Sound like men did that. Not God.
Sofia: [referring to Henry] He’s a prizefighter. But the man ain’t never been knocked down until he met me.
Mister: Shouldn’t you be at home taking care of your baby?
Sofia: Shouldn’t you be somewhere with folks your age like a cemetery?
Squeak: [to Sofia] Don’t touch me, you snaggletooth heifer!
Shug Avery: [referring to Mister] Beat you? Why he do that?
Celie: Because I ain’t you, I guess.
Shug Avery: You gots to stand up to him. You gots to try.
Celie: You gone a hour, feel like forever to me.
Shug Avery: I know. I know. That’s why I gots to come back. Nobody loves me like you do.
Shug Avery: Girl, it’s time for you to see the world!
Shug Avery: [reading Nettie’s letter to Celie] “If you do get this, I want you to know, I love you, and I’m not dead.”
Young Nettie: [referring to her life in Africa] It was like Black seeing Black for the first time. Celie, we are more than just kings and queens. We’re at the center of the universe.
Young Nettie: [in her letter to Celie] I have faith that God will let us see each other before we die. I only hope when that day comes, we are not too old to recognize each other.
Young Nettie: Dear Celie, there must be a God, because I finally heard from you.
Mister: [referring to Celie going to Memphis with Shug] I’d die before I let that happen.
Celie: Good. That’s just the going away present I been needing.
Mister: What’s gotten into you, dummy?
Celie: I done had enough of you. That’s what’s gotten into me. It’s time I be free from you and enter to creation.
Celie: [to Mister] You took my sister Nettie away from me. And you hid her letters all these years, and you knew she was the only person love me. But Nettie alive. And my children with Nettie in Africa. And when they get home, us all together, we going to whup your country a**!
Celie: Harpo, your daddy made my life hell on earth. He ain’t nothing but a sack of dead horse s**t. And horse s**t belong in the ground.
Sofia: She called him a sack of dead horse s**t. Now if that ain’t worth the joy of laughter, I don’t know what is.
Sofia: I want to thank you, Miss Celie, for everything you’ve done for me. I was feeling mighty bad, rotting in that prison cell. But you came and seen about me every week without fail. That’s how I knows there’s a God. Because he’s living in you.
Ol’ Mister: The women at this table have lost their minds.
Shug Avery: Shut up, you old toothless goat!
Celie: [to Mister] Did I ever ask you for anything? Not even your old sorry hand in marriage!
Shug Avery: Let’s go! Sofia can take care of this.
Sofia: Oh, yeah. Sofia born to take care of this.
Sofia: Old Sofia home now! There’s going to be some changes made!
Celie: Until you do right by me, everything you think about going to crumble.
Mister: You Black. You poor. You ugly. You a woman. I should’ve kept you under my shoe like the roach you is.
Celie: Everything done to me, already done to you. I may be Black. I may be poor. I may even be ugly. But I’m here! I’m here!
Celie: [referring to the pants] I can’t believe you wore those.
Mister: Oh, I thought it’d help scare away some of the flies.
Shug Avery: That ain’t all it going to scare away.
Celie: Nettie. My Nettie. I’ve missed you.
Celie: My family home.