Quotes About Southern

“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

“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 F. 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

“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

“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.

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

“It occurred to me almost constantly in the South that had I lived there I would have been an eccentric and full of anger, and I wondered what form the anger would have taken. Would I have taken up causes, or would I have simply knifed somebody?”
― Joan Didion, South and West: From a Notebook

“{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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“He was wearing a little bag of “Mojo” around his neck.”
― 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

“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

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

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

“So that I might face my past,
I dug these words from the richest southern soil
and held them in my hands like seeds waiting for rain.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose

“She wrote the names of the day's cakes on the board: traditional Southern red velvet cake and peach pound cake, but also green tea and honey macaroons and cranberry doughnuts. She knew the more unusual things would sell out first. It had taken nearly a year, but she'd won over her regulars with her skill with what they already knew, so now they would try anything she made.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“Kay yawned and rested her forehead against the windowpane, her fingers idly strumming the guitar: the strings sang a hollow, lulling tune, as monotonously soothing as the Southern landscape, smudged in darkness, flowing past the window. An icy winter moon rolled above the train across the night sky like a thin white wheel.”
― Truman Capote, The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories

“Obelisks don't grow from the soil, and stone men and iron horses are never built without purpose.”
― Vann R. Newkirk II

“If we weren’t running late already, I’d pull this truck onto a dirt road and show her just what she does to me.”
― Jiffy Kate, Fighting Fire