Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

by Fannie Flagg

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean…and they’d be mean even if they were rich.

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean…and they’d be mean even if they were rich.

I swear, I don’t know what people are using for brains anymore. Imagine those boys: They’re terrified to sit next to a nigger and have a meal, but they’ll eat eggs that came right out of a chicken’s ass.”

But He only gives you what you can handle and no more…and I’ll tell you this: You cain’t dwell on sadness, oh, it’ll make you sick faster than anything in this world.”

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.

“They say you never know a man until you live with him.”

“Evelyn Couch, how can you say that, you are still a young woman. Forty-eight years old is just a baby! You’ve got half your life left to live yet!

What was this power, this insidious threat, this invisible gun to her head that controlled her life…this terror of being called names? 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.

What have we done to be thought of that way? To be called cunt? People didn’t call blacks names anymore, at least not to their faces. Italians weren’t wops or dagos, and there were no more kikes, Japs, chinks, or spics in polite conversation. Everybody had a group to protest and stick up for them. But women were still being called names by men. Why? Where was our group?

The end of times are coming. Now, we may go to the year two thousand, but I doubt it.

He he he he he

‘Oh honey, it does no good to hate. It’ll do nothing but turn your heart into a bitter root. People cain’t help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don’t you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.’

Must be getting old or crazy…my other half, Wilbur, came home three days in a row, complaining of a headache…and is there anything worse than a man who has a little pain? Guess that’s why we have the babies…

“I know there’s good and bad in everything,” Evelyn said, “but I still can’t help but envy them, somehow. I just wish I could be free and open like they are.” “Well, I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Threadgoode said. “I just wish I had me a barbecue and a piece of pie, and I’d be happy.”

#mood