The Help (2011) - Quotes

Aibileen: [voice over] In just ten minutes, the only life I knew was done.

Mae Mobley: [calling after her through the window] A-a-a-aibee!

Aibileen: [voice over] 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 Treelore always said we gonna have a writer in the family one day. I guess it's gonna be me.

Hilly: [confronting Skeeter at her house about the book] I've contacted my lawyer, Hibbie Goodman! He's the best libel attorney in the state. Oh missy, you are goin to jail!

Skeeter: You can't prove anything.

Hilly: Oh I 100% know you wrote it, cause nobody else in town is as tacky as you!

Skeeter: You don't know anything, Hilly!

Hilly: [shoving Skeeter] Oh, I DON'T, do I?! You tell Aibileen that the next time she wants to write about my dear friend Elizabeth - uh huh, remember her, had you in her wedding? - let's just say, Aibileen ought to have been a little bit smarter before puttin in about that L-shaped scratch in poor Elizabeth's dining table. And that nigger Minny... do I have plans for her.

Skeeter: [calmly] Careful Hilly, that's Chapter Twelve. Don't give yourself away now.

Hilly: [storms over to the front door] That was NOT ME!!! I've come to tell your mother what a hippie you've become! She's going to be disgusted by you-!

Charlotte: [opens door before Hilly] Why, Hilly! Is everything okay, you two?

Hilly: Mrs. Phelan...

Charlotte: Hilly, you're a sweaty mess. Are you ill?

Hilly: No, ma'am...

Charlotte: [referring to the cold sore on Hilly's face] Darlin', oh, no husband wants to come home and see that.

Hilly: Oh... I didn't have time to get it fixed up.

Charlotte: You know, Hilly, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you've been eating too much pie.

Hilly: Mrs. Phelan, I...

Charlotte: In fact, I'm sure of it. Now you get your raggedy ass off my porch. Go on. Get off my property! NOW! Before we all get one of those disgusting things on our lips!

Stuart: I've never met a woman that says exactly what she's thinking.

Skeeter: Well, I got plenty to say.

Hilly: So. Nobody wanted to hire a sass-mouthin', thievin nigra- did they? Oh, pie's as good as always, Minny.

Minny: I'm glad you like it.

Hilly: If... I take you back, I'll have to cut your pay five dollars a week.

Minny: Take me back?

Hilly: What do you put in here that makes it taste so good?

Minny: [forces a smile] That good vanilla from Mexico... And... something else real special.

Minny: [quickly intervening] No, no no, Missus Walters. That Miss Hilly's special pie.

Hilly: [Minny doesn't respond; Hilly huffs in annoyance and shoves the pie at her] Momma can have a piece. Cut her one! Go get a plate!

Minny: Eat my shit.

Hilly: What'd you say?

Minny: I said eat... my... shit.

Hilly: Have you lost your mind?

Minny: No, ma'am. But you is about to. Cause you just did.

Mrs. Walters: [Minny hurries out of the house] And you didn't just have one, you had two slices! Run, Minny, run!

Celia: They don't like me because of what they think I did.

Minny: They don't like you because they think you white trash.

Hilly: They carry different diseases than we do. That's why I've drafted the Home Health Sanitation Initiative.

Skeeter: The what?

Hilly: 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.

Skeeter: Maybe we should just build you a bathroom outside, Hilly.

Hilly: You ought not to joke about the colored situation. I will do whatever it takes to protect our children.

Aibileen: I was born 1911, Chicksaw County, Piedmont Plantation.

Skeeter: And did you know as a girl growing up that one day you'd be a maid?

Clark: Yes ma'am, I did.

Skeeter: And you knew that because...

Aibileen: My mama was a maid. My grandmama was a house slave.

Skeeter: [whispering as she writes down; Aibileen nods yes] house slave..." Did you ever dream of being something else? What does it feel like to raise a white child when your own child's at home being looked after by somebody else?

Mrs. Walters: [when Hilly realizes what was in Minny's pie and runs off, gagging; begins laughing hysterically, as Minny flees] And you didn't have just ONE, you had TWO slices!!! RUN, MINNY, RUN!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Mrs. Walters: I may have 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.

Minny Jackson: [to Hilly] Eat my shit.

Minny Jackson: [to Eugenia] 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!

Minny Jackson: Frying chicken just tend to make you feel better about life.

Stuart Whitworth: [to Eugenia] Isn't that what all you girls from Ole Miss major in - professional husband hunting?

Preacher Green: If you can love your enemy, you already have a victory.

Hilly Holbrook: [hysterical] It's Skeeter! She put it in the newsletter. I specifically said, "Drop old coats at my house," not commodes!!! Why would she do this to me?

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan: [to Stuart] I'm sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant, or were you just born stupid?

Constantine 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.

Charlotte Phelan: [to Eugenia] Courage sometimes skips a generation. Thank you for bringing it back to our family.

Charlotte Phelan: [to Eugenia] Your eggs are dying. Would it kill you to go on a date?

Charlotte Phelan: [to Eugenia] Love and hate are two horns on the same goat, Eugenia. And you need a goat.

Aibileen Clark: [repeated line, to Mae Mobley] You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Aibileen Clark: [to Eugenia] Mrs. Leefolt should not be having babies. Write that down.