"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."
— Flannery O'Connor

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it."
— Tallulah Bankhead

"She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches."
— Sarah Addison Allen (Garden Spells)

"That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness..."
— Anne Rivers Siddons (Colony)

"In the south, they say Abilifa`. But I don't know why southern people need Abilifa` because it seams like there always happy. Happy cowboys. "
— Tenley Rissover

"Fincher was the kind of Southerner who will try to address you through a web of deep and antic southernness, and who assumes every body in earshot knows all about his parents and history and wants to hear an update about them at every opportunity. He looks young, but still manages to act 65."
— Richard Ford (The Sportswriter)

"I'd sooner wear white shoes in February, drink unsweetened tea, and eat Miracle Whip instead of Duke's than utter the words 'you guys'."
— Celia Rivenbark (Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments)

"Summer in the deep South is not only a season, a climate, it's a dimension. Floating in it, one must be either proud or submerged."
— Eugene Walter (The Untidy Pilgrim)

"What's causin' all this?"
— Ric Flair

"About the South:

"[About Mr. Fruit, an eccentric man, out of touch with reality who directed traffic at his own whim, ignoring the lights in downtown Colleton. The town just went along with it.]

"There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly well for many years. He had not only monitored the comings and goings of the town, his presence softened the ingrained evil that flourished along the invisible margins of the town’s consciousness. Any community can be judged in its humanity or corruption by how it manages to accommodate the Mr. Fruits of the world. Colleton simply adjusted itself to Mr. Fruit’s harmonies and ordinations. He did whatever he felt was needed and he did it with style. “That’s the Southern way” my grandmother said. “That’s the nice way.”"

"
— - Pat Conroy Excerpt from Prince of Tides "
— Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)

"[About Mr. Fruit, an eccentric man, out of touch with reality who directed traffic at his own whim, ignoring the lights in downtown Colleton. The town just went along with it.]

"There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly well for many years. He had not only monitored the comings and goings of the town, his presence softened the ingrained evil that flourished along the invisible margins of the town’s consciousness. Any community can be judged in its humanity or corruption by how it manages to accommodate the Mr. Fruits of the world. Colleton simply adjusted itself to Mr. Fruit’s harmonies and ordinations. He did whatever he felt was needed and he did it with style. “That’s the Southern way” my grandmother said. “That’s the nice way.”"

"
— - Pat Conroy Excerpt from Prince of Tides