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.

The food in the South is as important as food anywhere because it defines a person's culture.

It’s funny, most people can be around someone and then gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened

Albert 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.

Hazel always used to say There's not enough darkness in the entire universe to snuff out the light of just one little candle.

If 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.

You're just a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode. That's what you are, a bee charmer.