Savannah Georgia Quotes

“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

“The realization of dreams, like every battle for freedom, has always required compromise to one degree or another. When the result of a concession, however, is the mutilation of your soul or the cancellation of someone else's future, then it may be said the desired goal was corrupted or destroyed rather than attained.”
― Aberjhani, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

“During slavery, it was thought by some observers that the apparent good cheer of the slaves had something to do with their expectation that the roles would be reversed in the hereafter: They would be the masters, and whites would be their slaves. In the 1960s, the civil rights struggle put a temporary strain on relations, but integration was peaceful on the whole, Since then, Savannah had been governed by moderate whites who made it their business to stay on good terms with the black community. As a result, racial peace was maintained, and blacks remained politically conservative, which is to say, passive. But it was evident that underneath their apparent complacency, Savannah's blacks were beset by an anguish and despair that ran so deep and expressed itself with such violence that it had made Savannah the murder capital of America.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“In Treasure Island, Savannah is the place where Captain John Flint, the murderous pirate with the blue face, has died of rum before the story begins. It is on his death bed in Savannah that Flint bellows his last command - "Fetch aft the rum, Darby!" - and hands Billy Bones a map of Treasure Island. "He gave it me at Savnnah," says Bones, "when he lay a-dying." The book has a drawing of Flint's map in it with an X marking the location of the buried treasure.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Hopefully, you will glimpse something of your own life’s journey and with Elemental’s Power of Illuminated Love, possibly recognize and celebrate something you had not been able to recognize or celebrate before.”
― Luther E. Vann, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

“The people of the city of Savannah within their collective conscience could follow previous examples in history and forgive the atrocities of actual slavery committed against slaves themselves. But what was it [the city] to do with the knowledge that children completely unaware of the greater ramifications of slavery were led to the Civil War slaughter in its name? How does one acknowledge with forgiveness such an unforgiving mutilation of one’s own mind, body, soul, and legacy?”
― Aberjhani, Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah

“In Old Savannah by Stewart Stafford

Quaking earth unleashed,
An immigrant stands proud in the mêlée,
Takes up the standard of his adopted country,
And joins the charge.

Blind in the cannon smoke,
Grapeshot ricochets past,
Then the patriot holds his gut,
And falls bleeding.

His wife awakes,
To see his apparition at the foot of their bed,
Morose and fading fast,
Tears hang like ever-present Spanish moss on live oak.

The immigrant stands proudly once more,
Motionless and eternal on the plinth,
A child with his father at the base points up at him,
With future glory in his eyes.

© Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford