Dena had always been a loner. She did not feel connected to anything. Or anybody. She felt as if everybody else had come into the world with a set of instructions about how to live and someone had forgotten to give them to her. She had no clue what she was supposed to feel, so she had spent her life faking at being a human being, with no idea how other people felt. What was it like to really love someone? To really fit in or belong somewhere? She was quick, and a good mimic, so she learned at an early age to give the impression of a normal, happy girl, but inside she had always been lonely.
Fannie FlaggNo matter what you look like, there's somebody who's gonna think you're the handsomest man in the world.
Fannie FlaggHazel always used to say There's not enough darkness in the entire universe to snuff out the light of just one little candle.
Fannie FlaggThe food in the South is as important as food anywhere because it defines a person's culture.
Fannie FlaggRemember, if people talk about you behind your back, it only means you are two steps ahead of them.
Fannie FlaggIt's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It sure did on me.
Fannie FlaggIn order to be Miss Anybody you had to have excellent grades, and I had terrible grades because of my dyslexia.
Fannie FlaggThe line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.
Fannie FlaggMarriage. Isn't it great? Each time you fall back in love with your [spouse] it gets better and better.
Fannie FlaggAll right, then, I'd die for you. How about that? Don't you think somebody could die for love?
Fannie FlaggIt was a stretch to imagine that Barbara Walters might want to give it all up for Ed Couch, but Evelyn tried her hardest. Of course, even though she was not religious, it was a comfort to know that the Bible backed her up in being a doormat.
Fannie FlaggIt's funny, most people can be around someone and they gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened; but Ruth knew the very second it happened to her. When Idgie had grinned at her and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with all her heart.
Fannie FlaggStrangely enough, the first character in Fried Green Tomatoes was the cafe, and the town. I think a place can be as much a character in a novel as the people.
Fannie FlaggI brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in a swing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, to hang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked from the waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picture for fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, I don't think the old men they've got here can see well enough to notice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, so she's in the closet with my gallstones.
Fannie FlaggIt’s funny, most people can be around someone and then gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened
Fannie FlaggI think that people that are not sensitive, who seem to bang through life, do survive, but I don't think they get the really soaring feelings that people who are more artistically bent can get.
Fannie FlaggBeing a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.
Fannie FlaggIf you do everything in your power to avoid writing and still can't, then you must be a writer.
Fannie FlaggOne gal drank a can of floor wax and topped it off with a cup of Clorox, trying to separate herself from the same world he was in.
Fannie FlaggIn her opinion, Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence Birdseye are the two greatest Americans that ever lived excluding Robert E. Lee. She believes we never lost the War Between the States, that General Lee thought General Grant was the butler and just naturally handed him his sword.
Fannie FlaggPeople cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.
Fannie FlaggThere Lives More Faith in Honest Doubt, Believe Me, Than Half the Creeds. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Fannie FlaggYes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face.
Fannie FlaggHe had mourned each of those great trains as, one by one, they were pulled off the lines and left to rust in some yard, like old aristocrats, fading away; antique relics of times gone by.
Fannie FlaggDaddy gave me real useful information to protect me in the real world. If anyone hits me, I'm not to hit them back. I wait until their back is turned, then hit them in the head with a brick.
Fannie FlaggBeing an only child and losing both my parents at an early age, I have found that the friends I have made over the years are the people who help me get through life, good times and bad.
Fannie FlaggIf you cage a wild thing, you can be sure it will die, but if you let it run free, nine times out of ten it will run back home.
Fannie FlaggI wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.
Fannie FlaggI just know there's an albino living in the colored quarters. I can feel it in my bones.
Fannie FlaggAlbert and I would spend hours and hours looking at them. Cleo had this big magnifying glass on his desk, and we'd find centipedes and grasshoppers and beetles and potato bugs, ants . . . and put them in a jar and look at them. They have the sweetest little faces and the cutest expressions. After we'd looked at them all we wanted to, we'd put them in the yard and let them go on about their business.
Fannie Flagg