Jordan County Quotes

“They burnt crosses every night all around us, and a man who'll burn what he prays to, he’ll burn anything.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“for the people sat in their Sunday clothes, soberly nodding agreement with all the preachers said about impending doom on earth and searing flame hereafter, and came out Monday morning as before; they gave the Lord His day, and kept the other six for their own uses.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“He was always on hand for misfortune, among the first to arrive when tragedy struck, and for this reason was known as Light Hearse Harry.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“Thats the trouble with having money; you think about buying almost anything you see.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“Who can tell? Together, with God’s blessing — which surely He will not withhold — you may perhaps be laying the groundwork, the foundation for a future Athens, an Athens of the South. Yes. And this young woman’s child, so soon to be born,” he added, indicating Ella with a deferential nod, “will be one of its leading citizens, the one perhaps under whom it will come to flower, a beacon for the South, a torch held out.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“They played the things Duff had learned while crouching under Bantam Street windows, the old songs that had been great before some of the boys were born, things never set down on paper but kept alive in places and in memories such as these.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“I asked myself, again and again: ‘What does it mean? What does it mean?’ And you know, I finally found the answer; one answer, anyhow. It dont mean a thing. Nothing. Why should it mean anything? I stopped thinking about it is what I finally did. It’s what you better do, too. Dont think about it.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County

“Originally it was intended to put the names of the war dead on the signboard, the whites down one side and the Negroes down the other, with the American flag between. But the notion of having them all on one board caused so much ugly feeling — there was even some talk of dynamite, for example — that the service club whose project it was took a vote and decided that it would be better just to say something fitting about the spirit of our boys. That was what they did, and already it had begun to look a bit weathered around the edges.”
― Shelby Foote, Jordan County