Emma Stone: Skeeter Phelan

The Help

Skeeter Phelan

Constantine Jefferson: What you doin' hiding out here, girl?
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: I just couldn't tell Mama I didn't get invited to the dance.
Constantine Jefferson: That's all right. Some things we just got to keep to ourselves.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: The boys say I'm ugly. Mama was the third runner-up in the Miss South Carolina pageant...
Constantine Jefferson: Now you quit feeling sorry for yourself. Now that's ugly. Ugly is something that grows up from inside you. It's mean and hurtful, like them boys. Now you not one of them, is you?
[Skeeter shakes her head]
Constantine Jefferson: I didn't think so, honey. 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? "Am I gonna believe all them bad things them fools say about 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.

Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: I'm sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant? Or were you just born stupid?

Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: What the hell? What are you doing here?
[Hilly throws her cigarette at Skeeter]
Hilly Holbrook: I contacted my lawyer. Hibby Goodman? He is the best libel attorney in the state. Oh, Missy, you are going to jail!
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: You can't prove anything!
Hilly Holbrook: Oh, I 100% know you wrote it, 'cause nobody in this town is as tacky as you!
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: [Pokes Hilly] You don't know anything, Hilly!
Hilly Holbrook: [Shoves Skeeter] Oh, I don't, do I? You tell Aibileen the next time she wants to write about my good friend Elizabeth... Hm? Remember her? Had you in her wedding?... Let's just say Aibileen should have been a bit smarter before writing about that L-shaped scratch in poor Elizabeth's dining table.
[takes off her sunglasses]
Hilly Holbrook: And that nigger Minny... do I have plans for her.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Careful, Hilly. That's chapter 12.
[Hilly gasps]
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Don't give yourself away now.
Hilly Holbrook: That was not me!

Hilly Holbrook: They carry different diseases than we do. That's why I've drafted the Home Health Sanitation Initiative.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: The what?
Hilly Holbrook: 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.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Maybe we should just build you a bathroom outside, Hilly.

[first lines]
Aibileen Clark: I was born 1911, Chicksaw County, Piedmont Plantation.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: And did you know as a girl growing up that one day you'd be a maid?
Aibileen Clark: Yes ma'am, I did.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: And you knew that because...
Aibileen Clark: My mama was a maid. My grandmama was a house slave.
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: [whispering as she writes down] "house slave..." Did you ever dream of being something else?
Aibileen Clark: [nods yes]
Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: What does it feel like to raise a white child when your own child's at home being looked after by somebody else?

Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan: Constantine didn't do anything wrong. You love Rachel. I know you do.
Charlotte Phelan: [about Grace Higginbotham] She was our president. What was I supposed to do?