Southern Fiction Quotes & Sayings

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

{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

Humans need each other for equilibrium and support. But writers must pull aside to take a quiet walk alone, not just for the sake of serenity but to hear the Voice inside. That is how the storyteller connects with with others--listen, write, share. — Patricia Hickman

I'd always thought of him as one of those fat catfish swimming in the Catawba River, trudging along the bottom with his belly in the mud, his mouth open, feeding on whatever he came across. — Wiley Cash

Farm labor had stained his hands, but music stained his heart. — Brenda Sutton Rose

Life can surprise you. You want something with every ounce of blood that flows in your veins, and then one day it's yours. Right there before you. Everything. You break out in a cold sweat with the undeniable realization that what you really want is home. Sometimes finding home is a long time coming. A long journey. — Brenda Sutton Rose

I reckon it's true what they say that good begets good and bad begets bad. The evil men do lives on after them, but what good they done gets buried with their bones. — Lisa Kaye Presley

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

~ darkness doesn't have to mean evil. — Mari Adkins

By the standards of a tourist strolling past looking for a quick lunch, the place was a dive. The sign on the window was small and easy to miss, and the antique feel of the place wasn't the prepackaged, old-shit-on-the-wall nostalgia that came with so many chain restaurants. The cafe was just old, and everything about it said old. But Jon liked it that way, if only because it kept the tourists away and spared him from hearing imported ignorance when there was plenty of local ignorance to go around. — Scott B. Pruden

The child came to a stop beside her mother and stared up at her face as if she had never seen it before. It was the face of the new misery she felt, but on her mother it looked old and it looked as if it might have belonged to anybody, a Negro or a European or to Powell himself. The child turned her head quickly, and past the Negroe's ambling figures she could see the column of smoke rising and widening unchecked inside the granite line of trees. She stood taut, listening, and could just catch in the distance a few wild high shrieks of joy as if the prophets were dancing in the fiery furnace, in the circle the angel had cleared for them. — Flannery O'Connor

While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit. — Patricia Hickman

Southern writing is regional: it includes dialect, settings, and cultural traditions from that region. However the themes and story conflicts are universal. My challenge is to write regional fiction without falling into the trap of nostalgia. There are important issues facing the south that I believe should be raised in the stories to make them contemporary, believable, and relevant to today's readers. — Mary Alice Monroe

With time, grief has a way of slipping down in the crevices of your heart. It never really leaves; it just makes room for more. — Nancy B. Brewer

The confessional writer will treat her story like a wailing wall. She kneels, and her story spills out, messy, improper. It isn't a protest or even graffiti, but her story is an offering of things that she overlooked or notices that others have overlooked. She is in danger of exposure but she remembers when she lived in hiding and that was worse. She cannot turn back now because this is how life has spun out of her, part vexing passage and part prayer. — Patricia Hickman

Are you aware that Jesus Christ can spell? I get so tired of you spelling every slang and cuss word that crosses your mind, as though you are pulling one over on the Lord. — Brenda Sutton Rose

I write books with words. Numerous words. Words that stomp and stare and crush and collapse and boogie and bang and scream and laugh and manipulate. My books are a storehouse of words that form paragraphs that form chapters that form stories that form thoughts that live on long after you've read the last word. — Brenda Sutton Rose

The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults. — Brenda Sutton Rose

The central character is an incomplete package of yearning that takes the length of the novel to complete. Completion, though, is not to be confused with perfection. — Patricia Hickman

Facing the sagging middle when writing a novel, while inevitable, may be
overcome by pre-planning. I divide my collection of proposed scenes into three acts, each scene inciting tension that builds toward the final crisis in Act Three. If by Act Two the emotional river isn't spilling over the banks, I reassess the plot so that once the writing is flowing I don't slide into a dry creek. The central character should be struggling to navigate life well into the end of Act One, even if her fiercest antagonist is only from within. — Patricia Hickman

Writing is an act of faith. One must believe and see people who are invisible to others and be faithful to tell half formed stories. It's like being on the trail of an apparition who's repeatedly just out of reach.
K. Youngblood — Katherine Imogene Youngblood

He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember. — Brenda Sutton Rose

Nowadays he drove the car into town to fetch his grandfather from habit alone, and though he still considered forty five miles an hour merely cruising speed, he no longer took cold and fiendish pleasure in turning curves on two wheels or in detaching mules from wagons by striking the whiffle-trees with his bumper in passing. — William Faulkner

Raw Living: Picking blackberries, beneath late afternoon sun; a sunset reminiscent of watermelon sangria, as the scent of honeysuckle accosts me and the ducks waddle into the lake. Thanking Mama Nature for her abundance. Loving this candied-sweet southern life. — Brandi L. Bates

There were thousands of children just like her in the world. She had walked through the fire and come out the other side scorched, but not consumed by it. — J.L. Murphey

She opened up the glass jar she kept spare buttons in and began sorting through them. It was like handling bits and pieces of the past - buttons from loved ones' dresses and suits and coats carefully gathered up and saved for future use. She had inherited many of the buttons from her mother and grandmother, even her Great Aunt Maggie. Each woman adding to the collection, like curators of a family museum. Now what would happen to them? — Elizabeth Jennings

Hiding had been effortless in New York City. Getting lost in a sea of people was as easy as stepping onto a crowded Subway car. Sweet Laurel Cove would be very different. Generations of families filled its church pews, ran its farms, and schooled its children. Anonymity was as rare as lightning bugs in wintertime - as her grandmother would say. — Teresa Tysinger

Easy for you to say," Polly said. "You've lived here all your life and stayed under the radar. No one points at you."
"Sometimes small children point at my butt," Aunt Rhea said. "But that's just on account of all the fried chicken. — Kathy Hepinstall

Wild steep mountains floating in a haze of cloud...a sea of green trees swallowing the hills and valleys, and curling around the trails and rivers, with the wind in the leaves as its tide. — Sharyn McCrumb

Sea and land may lie between us, but my heart is always there with you. — Nancy B. Brewer

They later moved to a tin-roof house that was situated in a gas field under a spectacular flare that burned all the time. Big copper-green beetles the size of mice came from all over the Southland to see it and die in it. At night their corpses pankled down on the tin roof. — Charles Portis

In favor of southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for preserving polite fiction at the expense of human life. — Harper Lee

There are two things I am afraid of. One is dying young. The other is Johnny Monroe. — Susan Gabriel

It might be late September, but is was hot as the six shades of hell. — Charlaine Harris

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that. — Robert Morgan

We don't always get what we want. And sometimes, when we do, it's not worth the price. — Stephanie Lawton

He had spent his life running, secrets spitting at his back. With the coach clocking him, Kevin took flight, his feet hitting the ground and pulling back with tremendous speed. Demons--visions of the eager hands of pretty boys with firm bodies--chased him, chipping away at the space separating them, their claws a whisper away from his flesh. He ran until he felt his lungs would give out; like a madman he ran. — Brenda Sutton Rose

Serving time doesn't make you fit to do anything but serve more time. — Donald Hays

Seasons didn't come behind the nicotine-stained walls of Mountain City's prison, so Harm always imagined it spring--the locust trees clustered with shaggy white blooms, the wet woods flecked with bloodroot, and wild roses and honeysuckle flashing white among the chestnuts on the mountainsides... — Sharyn McCrumb

The only thing that ever leaves this place is that muddy water in the Rappahannock. — Randolph Randy Camp

The curtains were not yet drawn and with the moonlight spreading across the room, I could see clearly. I undressed and slipped a soft cotton gown over my naked body. I pulled the blanket off the foot of my bed, covered my shoulders and wa ... lked out on the balcony. The cool night air blowing through my hair served as a reminder that only a hint of summer remained in this year of 1860. — Nancy B. Brewer

It wasn't that she believed in voodoo, precisely - but she believed in the people who believed in voodoo - and that was scary enough.

-Coralee Ayers — Caitlin Rush

Livy hadn't anticipated meeting anyone and wasn't ready to explain why the last few years
of her life had worn her so much, leaving her searching for home. Surely, Jack didn't care to hear a sob story from a perfect stranger. Actually, Livy wasn't sure she believed that. Something whispered inside her soul that Jack was just the person she needed to tell. — Teresa Tysinger

F***ing triffids. — Scott B. Pruden

Ain't nothing too serious. Even death is a joke on the old devil, if we are living for the Lord. — Nancy B. Brewer

Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at. — Barbara Kingsolver

That's the trouble with innocents. They aren't innocent of doing, just of knowing what they're doing. — Jack Butler

We all have scars. Just because mine are hidden doesn't make them any less painful. — Nicki Salcedo

Somewhere, a rattlesnake strike makes the dance begin. Three hawks float in the light blue sky overhead. Crows caw and the sweet seduction of lavender fills my head. And she waltzes through my thoughts. — Hunter S. Jones

Their eyes locked. Again, heat rose to Livy's cheeks. He needed to stop looking at her that way. She never should have noticed the captivating hue of his sky-blue eyes. When was the last time a man flustered her like this. Maybe never. — Teresa Tysinger

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

Today, it is the scent of honeysuckle that takes me back in time and lays me down near a barn. I pick a honeysuckle blossom, touch the trumpet to my nose and inhale. With sticky filthy fingers, I pinch the base of its delicate well then lick the drop of nectar. The sweet liquid makes me thirst for more, and I reach for another and another, the same hands that reach again and again for tobacco as I string. I separate honeysuckle blossoms and taste. — Brenda Sutton Rose

As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music. — Brenda Sutton Rose

Everything changes except human behavior and its consequences. — Stephanie M. Sellers

Nothing helps your partner keep his mind on Jesus more than having a sign of His love tanned on your primary erogenous zones. — Scott B. Pruden

His eyes settled due west and gazed through the silhouetted, leaf-bare branches to the now-black rolling hills of the mountains he called home. The sun was setting on another day in Laurel Cove, though he couldn't help but wonder what was rising on the horizon. — Teresa Tysinger

Maybe these dreams of ours just floats away. Here we go again ... changin' face. — Randolph Randy Camp

Ever since I could remember reading, I was a fan of Horror Novels, then just an Avid reader of all things dark and deeply written or off the cuff styles and not so bland and sterile as if the grammar police forensically wrote it to be safe, then re-edited it to be even more annoyingly not from an emotion but from a text book, I love dark dark fiction that's why i write it. Some of my favorite writers are Anne Rice, Hunter S. Thompson and Clive Barker, perhaps you can sense this in my writing. — Liesalette

The woods are full of regional writers, and it is the great horror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them. — Flannery O'Connor

It felt like I had a thousand packs of Strawberry Pop Rocks simultaneously detonating in my chest, and I dilated at least eight centimeters! — Piper Faust

There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you. The great advantage of being a Southern writer is that we don't have to go anywhere to look for manners; bad or good, we've got them in abundance. We in the South live in a society that is rich in contradiction, rich in irony, rich in contrast, and particularly rich in its speech — Flannery O'Connor

Christians are the salt of the earth ... Nothing grows where they've been. — Donald Hays

If you want vampires and werewolves, faeries, fallen angels or zombies, you won't find them here. I know a real-life monster. — Stephanie Lawton

When we became teenagers boredom grew like a moth in a cocoon fighting to escape, and the peace created by our parents became a prison. We sought excitement and adventure. We sought anything but the sinless, pure, and average of the faux idyllic. — Scott Thompson

I started out hoping to remind people at some point in the novel that we should be loving and kind. But then the theme usurped my life, spilling over into my novels until love was no longer a small voice, but now my purpose as a writer. — Patricia Hickman

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

The mind of man can only teach what he has learned from others. It is how you use that knowledge that will decide who you are. — Micheal Rivers

She turned her painted blue eyes toward the assistant and said something in French before she left. — Nancy B. Brewer

Like the magnolia tree,
She bends with the wind,
Trials and tribulation may weather her,
Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms,
See her standing there, like steel,
With her roots forever buried,
Deep in her Southern soil. — Nancy B. Brewer

Because of sorrow, my awareness of life's pulse is strongly detectable. It is syncopation while I journey, a lap of ocean in the eyes of every person I meet. This awareness informs the flesh of my stories. Grief has been an odd companion, at first a terror, but now I am all the better having accepted it for its intrinsic worth. — Patricia Hickman

Kevin knew he had to always outrun the enemy inside him, and if that meant playing football, he'd do it. During puberty, he had taken off running and found too late that he couldn't stop. In dreams that turned into nightmares he ran in fear, ripped from sleep in a sweat, shouting,"Run! — Brenda Sutton Rose

I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting. — Pat Conroy

The ultimate downfall of the computerized holographic receptionist was that there was no amount of flattery, flirtation or chocolate that could convince one to lie for you. — Scott B. Pruden

The conflict each day is whether to immerse in books or writing. I can't do one without the other, but I can't do both at the same time. It is the writer's paradox. — Patricia Hickman

I look at you, Mrs. Emily. I see your eyes smile before your lips. Your hair has a curl that droops onto your forehead when the weather is humid . . .

I look at you too, Sabine. I see you. — Phyllis H. Moore

Well, honey, it is the south. These debutantes know how to verbally kick anyone's ass. They learned it from their mamas in the womb. — Magan Vernon