Daddy 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.

Marriage. Isn't it great? Each time you fall back in love with your [spouse] it gets better and better.

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.

Strangely 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.

It'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.

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean . . .

That's what I'm living on now, honey, dreams, dreams of what I used to do.