Fannie Flagg Quotes

Lenore had pushed her into had been a complete disaster.

Women are fools; they will marry anything that has a heartbeat just to have a man.

After Elner Shimfissle accidentally poked that wasps' nest up in her fig tree, the last thing she remembered was thinking "Uh-oh.

Yes, 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.

But you soon find out they don't want to meet you, they want you to meet them.

It's always the darkest just before the glorious dawn.

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.

She sat there admiring the beauty of the light amber fluid in the clear bottle, the way the condensation on the Miller bottle ran down the black and gold label, like it was a fine piece of art. That was the problem with alcohol. It was so beautiful to look at, how could you resist it? And what kind of place could be more inviting and seductive than a truly elegant cocktail bar?

Your mother formed an incorrect opinion of you and, naturally, you agreed with her. Children always think their parents are right. But in this case, your mother was entirely wrong. Think about it. Your mother is an overpowering individual,

Oh no, honey. Lots of women go through it early. Why, there was this woman over in Georgia who was only thirty-six-years-old and one day she got in her car and drove right up the stairs to the county courthouse, rolled down her window, and tossed her mother's head that she had just chopped off in her kitchen at a State policeman and hollered, "Here! This is what you wanted," and drove right back down the courthouse stairs. Now that's what an early menopause will do for you if you're not careful.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you are two steps ahead.

By the way, is there anything sadder than toys on a grave?

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

All right, then, I'd die for you. How about that? Don't you think somebody could die for love?

They gave Saint Patrick his own day and what did he do but run out a bunch of snakes. Why, Thomas Edison lit up the world. If it hadn't been for him we'd all still be sitting here in the dark, with nothing but a candle,

Mrs. Threadgoode pulled something out of the Cracker Jack box and all of a sudden her eyes lit up. "Oh Evelyn, look! Here's my prize. It's a little miniature chicken ... just what I like!" and she held it out for her friend to see.

Seated in a car full of women, squashed between his six-foot landlady and Sybil Underwood, having to listen to them talk nonstop all the way to Atlanta and back, was too much for him to bear.

Being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.

Churches were shut down and Stanislaw's father and three uncles had been sent to prison camps for speaking out.

When she finally was able to order a martini, the first sip nearly knocked her head off. It was so strong. And how surprised she was that scotch tasted more like iodine than butterscotch candy. Two of the great disappointments in her life.

as they walked home, and she would

What was this power, this insidious threat, this invisible gun to her head that controlled her life ... this terror of being called names?
She had stayed a virgin so she wouldn't be called a tramp or a slut; had married so she wouldn't be called an old maid; faked orgasms so she wouldn't be called frigid; had children so she wouldn't be called barren; had not been a feminist because she didn't want to be called queer and a man hater; never nagged or raised her voice so she wouldn't be called a bitch ...
She had done all that and yet, still, this stranger had dragged her into the gutter with the names that men call women when they are angry.

Just think, Ruth, I never did it for anybody else before. Now nobody in the whole world knows I can do that but you. I just wanted us to have a secret together, that's all.

I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.

...Rejoice for a comrade deceased,
Our loss is his infinite gain,
A soul out of prison released,
And free from its bodily chain."
~Smokey Lonesome

Depression years come back to me now as the happy times, even though we were all struggling. We were happy and didn't know it.

You know, a heart can be broken, but it still keeps a-beating just the same.

You may not be the person your mother wants you to be, but you are you. Our job here is to try and separate the wheat from the chaff and figure out who you are and not who your mother thinks you are.

It'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.

Lately, it had been an endless procession of long, black nights and gray mornings, when her sense of failure swept over her like a five-hundred-pound wave; and she was scared. But it wasn't death that she feared. She had looked down into that black pit of death and had wanted to jump in, once too often. As a matter of fact, the thought began to appeal to her more and more.

She even knew how she would kill herself. It would be with a silver bullet. As round and as smooth as an ice-cold blue martini. She would place the gun in the freezer for a few hours before she did it, so it would feel frosty and cold against her head. She could almost feel the ice-cold bullet shooting through her hot, troubled brain, freezing the pain for good. The sound of the gun blast would be the last sound she would ever hear. And then... nothing. Maybe just the silent sound that a bird might hear, flying in the clean, cool air, high above the earth. The sweet, pure air of freedom.

No, it wasn't death she was afraid of. It was this life of hers that was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care waiting room.

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

Almost losing one person you love shines a bright spotlight on life, and suddenly strips you of everything but your real feelings.

When someone old dies, it is even sadder. First you notice that the paper doesn't come anymore, then gradually the lights are turned out, the gas turned off, the house gets locked up, and the yard is no longer kept up, then it goes on the market and new people come in and change everything. Elner

If you did tell the truth or if you didn't, there were always consequences. Human interaction was difficult at best.

How do you know if you're making the right decision?
Easy. Just like two and two always add up to four, kindness and forgiveness is always right, hate and revenge is always wrong.

You know, it's funny what you'll miss when you're away from home. Now me, I miss the smell of coffee ... and bacon frying in the morning.

You think people are some kind of pure, white feathered birds flying in the clouds. They're not. They're pigs and they love to wallow in the mud and dirt.

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

do you know that's the same woman

I hate a book that jumps around. Also I can promise

In order to be Miss Anybody you had to have excellent grades, and I had terrible grades because of my dyslexia.

And her dumplings were so light they would float in the air and you'd have to catch 'em to eat 'em.

You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.

Damn, I'm Miss Mississippi!

Suddenly being her age seemed great. She didn't have to look perfect. Hooray And think of all the senior discounts she had to look forward to not to mention Social Security Medicare and Medicaid. So what if she was afraid of getting old Big whoopdedoowho wasn't She wasn't alone everybody her age was in the same boat. She was going to relax and just let herself get older. Who cared if she wore twoinch heels instead of 3andahalf inch heels her feet hurt and not only that she was going to have a piec eof cake once in a while and she wasn't going to go anywhere she didn't feel like going anymore either. Bring on the Depends And the bunion pads and the Metamucil. And if she liked pretty music and old movies so what She wasn't hurting anyone.

Hazel had always said "If you're still breathing you're ahead of the game." And she'd been right. Life itself was something to look forward to and so for whatever time she had left she was going to enjoy every minute wrinkles and all. What a concept

The band did a salute to Stephen Foster and played 'Beautiful Dreamer' and we formed a bed. Then we played 'My Old Kentucky Home' while the majorettes slowly pranced like horses. We finished with 'I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair', we formed a comb. Miss Philpot is running out of ideas if you ask me.

It's not even people anymore, it's one big thing you want to control and once you've had a taste of it, you're hooked. It's like if you don't have it you will die, do you know what I mean? Somebody's handed you the baton and you can lead this rich, powerful orchestra. Does that make sense to you? I mean after that, leading a five-piece band means nothing, not after you've led that orchestra, thousands of people all playing the song just like you want them to.

Our car would've burned up too, but Michael, who is only twelve, got in it and backed it away. I climbed in with him and noticed some of my school books in the car, so I took them out and threw them in the fire. I figured it would save me from doing a lot of homework, but unfortunately under the headline in the paper the next day that said HARPER'S MALT SHOP BURNS TO THE GROUND IN TRAGIC FIRE it also said that seen throwing her school books into the fire was little Daisy Fay Harper. Rat's foot! No wonder Hollywood stars hate reporters, and after all that some busybody do-gooder has already bought me a new set of books.

There are magnificent beings on this earth, son, that are walking around posing as humans.

And so, as quietly as he had lived, he slipped out of town, leaving only a note behind:
Well, that's that. I'm off, and if you don't believe I'm leaving, just count the days I'm gone. When you hear the phone not ringing, it'll be me that's not calling. Goodbye, old girl, and good luck.
Yours truly,
Earl Adcock
P.S. I'm not deaf.

Idgie smiled back at her and looked up into the clear blue sky that reflected in her eyes and she was as happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be.

Remember, Sookie, nothing says more about a family than good silver and real pearls. The rest is just fluff.

I was sitting on the roof, and she didn't see me. I sit on the roof a lot. People never think to look up.

raging across Europe. Every night, families sat glued to the radio, listening to the news of Poland. Most still had relatives

Every woman wants to get married and have children.

I'm telling you, Dena, when you live long enough to see your children begin to look at you with different eyes, and you can look at them not as your children, but as people, it's worth getting older with all the creaks and wrinkles.

I 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.

On every door the management had placed a photograph of the person so they could find their room. As he went by he saw face after face of someone who used to be young.

You never know what's in a person's heart until they're tested, do you?

As the doctor said, When a fifty-eight-year-old man goes downtown dressed up in a Dale Evans cowgirl outfit, complete with a skirt with fringe, it's time ...

Whom the heart first loves does not know or care if they are related by blood.

Nobody was ever really ready to turn off their mother's machine, no matter what they thought; to turn off the light of their childhood and walk away, just as if they were turning out a light and leaving a room.

Do you think that your worrying can prevent anything from happening? Whatever happens is supposed to happen and whatever doesn't, isn't.

One 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.

I found out I got ringworm from Felix. If it gets in my head, they will have to shave off my hair. I'll be bald just like Eisenhower, and I am a Democrat.

Being 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.

He had been told that in America, if you worked hard, anything was possible.

Her daughter had given her a puff of a marijuana cigarette once, but after all the hot pads on the counter started walking toward her, she got scared and never tried it again. So dope was out.

Face it girls. I'm older and I have more insurance.

After the boy at the supermarket had called her those names, Evelyn Couch had felt violated. Raped by words. Stripped of Everything.

I believe in God, but I don't think you have to go crazy to prove it.

Grandma Harper has two green bottles shaped like women with black hair painted on their heads and a yellow glass colored captain's hat that she keeps her face powder in that I want too, and a picture of a naked girl in a swing, swinging way up in the air over castles in a blue sky.
I don't know why I want those things, I just do.

In 1945, when the male soldiers started coming back home from Europe, she and all the other women pilots that had served as WASPs during the war were unceremoniously told to go home and never received a dime or even thanks from the government.

Because any idiot can get married and have children; that's no great accomplishment.

Every time they have somebody born in the movies, it is a little boy. They never have little girls being born. What makes boys so great and woooonnnderfullll? I can do anything a boy can do

Those Russkies won't put up with your whining and bellyaching for one second. I believe in freedom and individual rights as well as the next man but nobody has the right to live here and do nothing but run us down.

The 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.

Sex, maybe, friendship, yes, but love, no. If she ever felt love coming toward her, she would cross the street to the other side.

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.

your camellias are holding up

Later on, still looking, she had tried to get involved with the Women's Community Center. She liked what they stood for but secretly wished they would wear just a little lipstick and shave their legs. She had been the only one in the room in full makeup, wearing pantyhose and earrings. She had wanted to belong, but when the woman suggested that next week they bring a mirror so they could all study their vaginas, she never went back.

Are you a politician or does lying just run in your family?

I knew I wasn't the picture of health, but I didn't think I was headed for the last roundup.

I have a lot of friends that are ex-Miss Alabamas and ex-Miss Georgias.

I just know there's an albino living in the colored quarters. I can feel it in my bones.

Oh, I know a lot of people struggle, wondering is there really a God. They sit and think and worry over it all their life. The good Lord had to make smart people but I don't think he did them any favors because it seems the smart ones start questioning things from the get go. But I never did. I'm one of the lucky ones. I thank God every night, my brain is just perfect for me, not too dumb, not too bright.

Evelyn stared into the empty ice cream carton and wondered where the smiling girl in the school pictures had gone.

All those calm, adult discussions. When all she really wanted to do was scream for her momma, her sweet momma, the one person in the world who loved her better than anyone ever would or ever could.

There Lives More Faith in Honest Doubt,
Believe Me, Than Half the Creeds.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I wish I could describe what it feels like to have thousands of people listening to your every word, how easy it is to please them, to get that applause and to hear them out there screaming for you. It's like being in control of one big ocean and you can calm it down or make it roar.

It 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.

Claude Pistal is a creep! He is lucky I'm reasonably mild-mannered like Clark Kent.

We must be kind and forgive one another or we won't survive. But even among the most religious there seems to be a great blind spot covering the world, an inability to learn from past experience. Civilization is as precarious as a sand castle. All the care and effort it took to create it can be knocked down in a second by some bully or another. And the world is full of bullies.

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.

it was Elner who gave me my first cat, after I had my breakdown, when I told her the doctor said I needed Prozac. She said, 'Tot, sometimes what you need is a kitten,' and you know, she was right.

And Lenore had served each child several cups of the Simmons eggnog, which was 75 percent rum and 25 percent nog. When they came to pick the children up, all four were stumbling around her living room in a drunken stupor.

So, Doc, will I be able to run the Boston Marathon again this year?

Poor little old human beings – they're jerked into this world without having any idea where they came from or what it is they are supposed to do, or how long they have to do it in. Or where they are gonna wind up after that. But bless their hearts, most of them wake up every morning and keep on trying to make some sense out of it. Why, you can't help but love them, can you? I just wonder why more of them aren't as crazy as betsy bugs. "

Aunt Elner, 1978

No matter what you look like, there's somebody who's gonna think you're the handsomest man in the world.