Southern Lit Quotes

“Having a purpose is the little secret of the nonpretties. Something to do always beats something to look at.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Big Stone Gap

“There is an old saying that every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it. I believe I'll stop telling this one here.”
― Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad

“He had been hurt doing everything he had ever done. He expected it, even wanted it. Nothing centered a man like pain. Nothing drove the irrelevant bullshit our of your mind like the taste of your own blood. Duffy always wanted to tell people who were worried about the future of their children, or about God and the order of the universe, to go out and break a rib or two. A few broken ribs threw all thoughts of children, God and the order of the universe right out the window. Nobody with broken ribs ever had free-floating anxiety, or so Duffy was convinced. It was cheaper that a psychiatrist and never so humiliating.”
― Harry Crews

“Everything changes except human behavior and its consequences.”
― Stephanie M. Sellers, The Gamecocks

“I know this place like I know the calluses on my hands.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose, Dogwood Blues

“Georgia Author Brenda Sutton Rose captures some of the conflicted and captivating characters of a rapidly changing South.”
― Janisse Ray

“You may suppose that perhaps this Walter T. Wallace found his destiny in food and passed down to his progeny a legacy like that of the great Colonel Sanders. The folks here in Wallace County would love to be able to tell you this is so. But no, like their granddaddy, the Wallace men were thievin’ crooks, always with a scheme ready to separate the weak from their hard-earned money.”
― Gwenn Wright, Midnight Beneath the Magnolia

“Although I wasn't there to bear witness, I imagine Lot's wife scanned the masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize her children, grown now. She looked back as I and any strong, loving mother would have done.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose, Dogwood Blues

“At 2:00 sharp on the afternoon of his internment, with his body resting in a casket in the front room of his home, the pallbearers--all bridge players--stuck a deck of cards in Mr. Hampton's cold hands, shut the lid over his head, and played bridge.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose, Dogwood Blues

“Them dandelion wishes float and float for miles hoping they might get lucky and find a place to root.”
― Randolph Randy Camp, False Dandelions

“...Mellungeons… their entire lives appeared devoted to the production of the ragged line of scions which shoeless and tattered sat for hours at a time on the porch edges, themselves not unlike the victims of some terrible disaster, and stared out across the blighted land with expressions of neither hope nor wonder nor despair. They came and went, unencumbered as migratory birds, each succeeding family a replica of the one before and only the names on the mailboxes altered, the new ones lettered crudely in above a rack of paint smears that obliterated the former occupants back into the anonymity from which they sprang.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper

“Dogwood Blues by Brenda Sutton Rose is a masterful work of classic small-town fiction.”
― Janice Daugharty

“Young man, we find our place in this world, we don't force our way in it!”
― Randolph Randy Camp, False Dandelions

“Patient: Where is Carey Street?
Miss Ida: "Go stand out in the street and you'll find it.”
― Toni Orrill, M.Ed.

“I don't really like to go on emotional rides with people. I like to drive.”
― Toni Orrill

“I have learn'd Poppy that people come an' go. Only Jesus is your true friend. And even He had Judas. Git rid of your Judas. Like your sister. Marc has lost his mind. Buying one gift for her an' anoth'r for Cherie. That boy bet'r git himself home. There's ain't no blessing in sin, I tell ya. The devil roams, he prowls Poppy and a man's heart is fertile territory.”
― Toni Orrill

“Iam a writer. I just happen to propagate mint and love bundt cake.”
― Toni Orrill

“He tried the crank radio, a pirate station out of Memphis. Static and guitar scratch, the straggling notes of a song about home.”
― David Wesley Williams, Everybody Knows (2023)