"I admired the fierce honesty in the single-mindedly feminist world-view of this book. It breaks many of the ‘rules’ of fiction. Walker comes close to painting all the men in a simplistic shade of ‘bad,’ although she attempts to give the nameless husband of Celie some redemption in the end. But the reader senses that a greater truth is at stake; that this was a story that needed to be told. I liked how Celie becomes strong with the love of Shug. And how Sofia is amazingly resilient but is punished for sassing the mayor, and later has to go and work for the mayor’s wife. I applauded Celie’s sexual awakening. And, most of all, I liked the idea that God gets angry if we walk past a field with the colour purple and don’t notice it."

"Who was it who did it before Marvin Gaye? They did it slower and more piano-driven. But I knew this version first and you could see the difference, how this version took the earlier version and streamlined it, sped it up, made it groovier, those kinds of things. When I first heard it, I had not heard anything quite as funky. The groove is just incredible, which has a lot do with the bass line. It's fantastically cool and sexy. A friend of mine from years ago was a barrister. He was trying to tell me The Beatles were fantastic. And I was trying to tell him the trouble with The Beatles was they don't groove. And he said, ""What is groove?"", like a typical magistrate. I said, ""Listen to 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine. That's groove."" It's like trying to explain, without pointing, what the colour red is."

"Sorry to pick this. Just saying the title's enough, really, isn't it? I know it's really obvious, but it's such a masterpiece. 

It's been strangely hard picking my albums for this, as lots of things don't resonate with me now like they used to when I was younger. I've been listening a lot more to classical and choral music in the last year, for example, but this fits in with that, because this is sacred music. It's music that transcends genre. Every track is profoundly beautiful – and I say that having liked Talk Talk before this, too. I remember the first album coming out at the same time as Duran Duran's Rio, and people comparing them, then hearing The Colour Of Spring. 'Life's What You Make It' was a big song when I was at sixth form. But this album… this is a bigger thing. I still love it so much.
"