Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Quotes

“Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, "What's your business?" In Macon they ask, "Where do you go to church?" In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is "What would you like to drink?”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“She was a marvel. She did exactly as she pleased all her life, God bless her.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“By morning she was dead. She had not died of starvation or committed suicide by any conventional means. She had simply willed herself to die, and being a strong-willed woman, she had succeeded. She had missed dying on her birthday by two days.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“But I never think about dead people. Looking at these old graves makes me think how generation after generation of the same family are all gathered together. And that makes me think about how life goes on, but not about dying. I never think about dying.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Someone once wrote that musicians are touched on the shoulder by God, and I think it's true. You can make other people happy with music, but you can make yourself happy too. Because of my music, I have never known loneliness and never been depressed.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“For me, Savannah's resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“The South is one big drag show, honey [...].”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“If there’s a single trait common to all Savannahians, it’s their love of money and their unwillingness to spend it.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Never spend any of your hard-earned money on clothes and accessories. You need to get yourself a mayyin to buy all that for you.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“[Quoting Miss Harty:]

"People come here from all over the country and fall in love with Savannah. Then they move here and pretty soon they’re telling us how much more lively and prosperous Savannah could be if we only knew what we had and how to take advantage of it. I call these people ‘Gucci carpetbaggers.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Black magic never stops. What goes from you comes to you. Once you start this shit, you gotta keep it up. Just like the utility bill. Just like the grocery store. Or they kill you. You got to keep it up. Two, five, ten, twenty years.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“We have a saying: If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, ‘What’s your business?’ In Macon they ask, ‘Where do you go to church?’ In Augusta they ask your grandmother’s maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is ‘What would you like to drink?”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“There being no direct route to Savannah from Charleston, I followed a zigzagging course that took me through the tidal flatlands of the South Carolina low country. As I approached Savannah, the road narrowed to a two-lane blacktop shaded by tall trees. There was an occasional produce stand by the side of the road and a few cottages set into the foliage, but nothing resembling urban sprawl. The voice on the radio informed me that I had entered a zone called the Coastal Empire.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“For me, Savannah’s resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms. It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone. Time”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Dr. Irving Stone of the Institute for Forensic Sciences in Dallas. He’s the guy who analyzed the clothing worn by President Kennedy and Governor Connally for the congressional committee that reexamined the Kennedy assassination.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“more drink. That’s when things happen. That’s when you find out everything you want to know.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Sometimes I just can't face going through with breakfast.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“rum-drinking pirates, strong-willed women, courtly manners, eccentric behavior, gentle words, and lovely music.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“You mustn’t be taken in by the moonlight and magnolias. There’s more to Savannah than that. Things can get very murky.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“The tides surged through the marsh and each wave that hit the beach came light-struck and broad-shouldered, with all the raw power the moon could bestow.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Don’t you feel cut off?” I asked. “Cut off from what?” she replied. “No, on the whole I’d say we rather enjoy our separateness.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Jim Williams’s guilt or innocence is no longer the issue,” he said. “Spencer Lawton’s incompetence is the issue.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Under the banner headline WILLIAMS CHARGED IN SLAYING, the story was very brief. It said that at 3:00 A.M., police had been summoned to Mercer House, where they found Danny Hansford, twenty-one, lying dead on the floor in the study, his blood pouring out onto an oriental carpet. He had been shot in the head and chest. There were two pistols at the scene. Several objects in the house had been broken. Williams had been taken into custody, charged with murder, and held on $25,000 bond. Fifteen minutes later, a friend of Williams had arrived at police headquarters with a paper bag containing 250 one-hundred-dollar bills, and Williams was released. That was all the newspaper said about the shooting. Williams was identified as an antiques dealer, a restorer of historic houses, and a giver of elegant parties at his “showplace” home, which Jacqueline Onassis had visited and offered to buy for $2 million. About Danny Hansford, the paper gave no information other than his age”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“He was a motion study in energy and turbulence, never looking right or left or acknowledging the presence of other people on the street, except on one occasion that she vividly recalled.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“I would presume nothing. I would take notes.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“We thought it proved Savannah was cosmopolitan, that we were sophisticated enough to accept a gay man socially.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil