Southern Quotes

“Total non-retention has kept my education from being a burden to me.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

“Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.”
― Tallulah Bankhead

“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“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

“She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina.

She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“Being Southern isn't talking with an accent...or rocking on a porch while drinking sweet tea, or knowing how to tell a good story. It's how you're brought up -- with Southerners, family (blood kin or not) is sacred; you respect others and are polite nearly to a fault; you always know your place but are fierce about your beliefs. And food along with college football -- is darn near a religion.”
― Jan Norris

“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

“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, The Prince of Tides

“Sing me a love song in a slow, southern drawl to the tune of sunny days...”
― Kellie Elmore, Magic in the Backyard

“The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Bein' rich is having leftovers. Good leftovers make yo' tongue fly outta yo' mouth and smack yo' brains out.”
― Paula Deen

“{Summertime she speaks of winter, she eats ham, but speaks of beef, got a good man but, flirts with another. She might as well go to hell, cause she ain't gonna be happy in heaven either!}”
― Nancy B. Brewer

“The decor was attractive and strong, but blander than she would have thought his wealth and position afforded him. Caren couldn't see the point of having that much money if all of it led to beige.”
― Attica Locke, The Cutting Season

“Many people, after spending a long weekend being stealthily seduced by this grand dame of the South, mistakenly think that they have gotten to know her: they believe (in error) that after a long stroll amongst the rustling palmettoes and gas lamps, a couple of sumptuous meals, and a tour or two, that they have discovered everything there is to know about this seemingly genteel, elegant city. But like any great seductress, Charleston presents a careful veneer of half-truths and outright fabrications, and it lets you, the intended conquest, fill in many of the blanks. Seduction, after all, is not true love, nor is it a gentle act. She whispers stories spun from sugar about pirates and patriots and rebels, about plantations and traditions and manners and yes, even ghosts; but the entire time she is guarded about the real story. Few tourists ever hear the truth, because at the dark heart of Charleston is a winding tale of violence, tragedy and, most of all, sin.”
― James Caskey, Charleston's Ghosts: Hauntings in the Holy City

“But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy of all white people.”
― James Lee Burke, Jolie Blon's Bounce

“Southern hospitality and Amish cooking - Ya'll Come Back, Danki.”
― Karen Harper, Fall from Pride

“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

“Jesus said take up your cross and follow Me, but He didn't ast us to go out and nail ourselves to a board.”
― Olive Ann Burns

“That's the trouble with innocents. They aren't innocent of doing, just of knowing what they're doing.”
― Jack Butler, Jujitsu for Christ

“He was wearing a little bag of “Mojo” around his neck.”
― Nancy B. Brewer, Carolina Rain

“I began to doubt that I would ever know the truth of what transpired, or who those people really were. But all that changed one rainy August afternoon, when I was surprised by a dead man who had answers.”
― James Caskey, Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City

“She turned her painted blue eyes toward the assistant and said something in French before she left.”
― Nancy B. Brewer, Carolina Rain

“You said you left Mississippi in 1854," Ron says. He turns to Mamuwalde and asks "Were you a runaway slave?"

"Not at all," Cindy Lou answers. "Daddy freed him."

Ron's jaw almost hits the floor. His wine glass does.”
― Daven Anderson, Vampire Syndrome

“Thanks to greenhouse transplants, we spent the afternoon harvesting a basket of tender yellow squash and zucchini---the first of the season. Roasted with hand-pressed olive oil, the fresh produce serves as an early supper, dished with homegrown herbs and a piping-hot bowl of fettuccine. For dessert, Mother's peach pie, baked from preserves and balanced with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream, all drizzled with a warm, dark loop of honey tapped straight from my father's hives.”
― Julie Cantrell, Perennials

“Nothing beats a glass bottle of Coke and a trusty Moon Pie under the heat of the Alabama sun.”
― Joseph Carro, The Little Coffee Shop of Horrors Anthology 2

“I myself can't go too long without real Southern fried chicken, skillet cornbread, and all the other wonderful staples of my home food.”
― Johnny Cash, Cash

“As she began "Dear..." she thought again that it did not matter which of the lot she addressed the letter to, for they presented to her the impermeable front of what she called "the family attitude" – suspicion of the worst based on insufficient knowledge of her life, and moral disapproval based firmly on their general knowledge of the weakness of human nature. Jenny couldn't possibly be up to any good, or she would have stayed at home, where she belonged. That is the sum of it, thought Jenny, and wouldn't their blood run cold if they could only know the facts? Ah well, the family can get under your skin with little needles and scalpels if you venture too near them: they attach suckers to you and draw your blood from every pore if you don't watch out. But that didn't keep you from loving them, nor them from loving you, with that strange longing, demanding, hopeless tenderness and bitterness, wound into each other in a net of living nerves.”
― Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools