Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

by Fannie Flagg

I may be sitting here at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home, but in my mind I’m over at the Whistle Stop Cafe having a plate of fried green tomatoes. –Mrs. Cleo Threadgoode June 1986

“It’s funny, when you’re a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you’re on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody.

You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.

You cain’t dwell on sadness, oh, it’ll make you sick faster than anything in this world.”

Eva had the extreme luxury in life of not caring about what people thought of her.

You never know what’s in a person’s heart until they’re tested, do you?”

There are magnificent beings on this earth, son, that are walking around posing as humans.

“I just wonder how many people never get the one they want, and wind up with the one they’re supposed to be with.

If there is such a thing as complete happiness, it is knowing that you are in the right place,

She had stayed a virgin so she wouldn’t be called a tramp or a slut; had married so she wouldn’t be called an old maid; faked orgasms so she wouldn’t be called frigid; had children so she wouldn’t be called barren; had not been a feminist because she didn’t want to be called queer and a man hater; never nagged or raised her voice so she wouldn’t be called a bitch … She had done all that and yet, still, this stranger had dragged her into the gutter with the names that men call women when they are angry.

“If you cage a wild thing, you can be sure it will die, but if you let it run free, nine times out of ten it will run back home.”