Mississippi Delta Quotes

So here is another shard of truth, which we must accept if we are to make sense of the trial: faith in our courts and our laws, in the statement chiseled above the columns of the U.S. Supreme Court building - 'Equal Justice Under Law' - can obscure the obvious, particularly with the passage of time. There was no equal justice, no universal protection of law in the Mississippi Delta, certainly not in 1955. ~ Timothy B. Tyson

Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story. ~ John Grisham

I'm from the Mississippi delta originally. ~ Little Milton

I don't remember any impression [from blues].The blues was just everywhere in the Mississippi Delta. It was mostly black sharecroppers living there, and there was a lot of blues around. Sometimes the guys would sing the blues in the fields, working. ~ Mose Allison

That Mississippi sound, that Delta sound is in them old records. You can hear it all the way through. ~ Muddy Waters

It's not enough to celebrate the ideals that we're built on, liberty and justice and equality for all. Those just can't be words on paper, the work of every generation is to make those words mean something, concrete in the lives of our children. And we won't get there as long as kids in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York or Appalachia or the Mississippi delta or the Pine Ridge reservation believe that their lives are somehow worthless. ~ Barack Obama

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana. ~ Robert Plant

In 1971, the Bureau of Reclamation released a plan to divert six million acre-feet from the lower Mississippi River and create a river in reverse, pumping the water up a staircase of reservoirs to the high plains in order to save the irrigation economy of West Texas and eastern New Mexico, utterly dependent on groundwater, from collapse. ~ Marc Reisner

Finally, the ecological health of the Mississippi River and its economic importance to the many people that make their living or seek their recreation is based on a healthy river system. ~ Ron Kind

Beware of the hound He's never been tamed Like cursive writing With a long last name Always hungry Scratchin' at fleas Beware of the dog Wont'cha please Beware of the cat He's a little neurotic Like a moonshine high On antibiotics Always climbing In an old oak tree Beware of the cat Wont'cha please Beware of the snake He's a little greasy Like Delta Blues Or the Ole Big Easy Always crawlin' Ain't got no knees Beware of the snake Wont'cha please Beware of the rabbit He's always listenin' Like a nosey neighbor Or a normal Christian Always eager Ill at ease Beware of the rabbit Wont'cha please Beware of the man Born too rich Like the Bubonic plague He's a son of a bitch Always selling Filled with greed Beware of the man Wont'cha please ~ K.W. Peery

I can't speak for the Kathryn Stockett, but I would guess that she feels proud of the progress the South has made because, growing up, she experienced a very different Mississippi than the one that exists today. ~ Viola Davis

My parents had to go to Ohio to get married in 1965 because it was still illegal in Mississippi. My white father and black mother. ~ Natasha Trethewey

He read it over twenty times and though the darkness that sang on held steady about him, the unhurried words fell bright through his mind, going down golden through deep water, and when one passed another came, ceaselessly, shining. ~ Elizabeth Spencer

Enlightenment is at the source of everything. From it, flows our Intuition and our creative energy. It is the delta of the human spirit ~ what we innately seek to return to, as we find ourselves lost in this world. ~ Kim Chestney

I was always singing the way I felt, and maybe I didn't exactly know it, but I just didn't like the way things were down there-in Mississippi. ~ Muddy Waters

From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene, broken by intervals of begged and stolen rides, on trains and trucks, and on country wagons with he at twenty and twentyfive and thirty sitting on the seat with his still, hard face and the clothes (even when soiled and worn) of a city man and the driver of the wagon not knowing who or what the passenger was and not daring to ask. The street ran into Oklahoma and Missouri and as far south again as Mexico and then back north to Chicago and Detroit and then back south again and at last to Mississippi. It was fifteen years long. ~ William Faulkner

Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail station - seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them. ~ Aldous Huxley

It is known that for the Greeks delta was a symbol for woman. The Pythagoreans regarded the triangle as the arche geneseoas because of its perfect form and because it represented the archetype of universal fertility. A similar symbolism for the triangle is to be found in India. ~ Mircea Eliade

I did not believe what I was told about being poor and black and female in Mississippi in 1954. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Pop was great fun. ~ Delta Goodrem

What do you call dumping 22,000 pounds of organic chemical waste into the Mississippi River every day? You call it "organic loading. ~ William D. Lutz

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. ~ B.B. King

Her family had no such ties. She was able to forge her way into that world. And then to those people, the idea of going to Arkansas, if you're gonna stop and think about it, you don't do it. It wouldn't have made any sense. It's like going to Mississippi. Why would you go to Alabama? You wouldn't go. You wouldn't ... That would be throwing your life away! For some reason, Hillary Clinton wanted to latch on to this guy [Bill Clinton] - and for some reason, this guy wanted her to latch on to him. ~ Rush Limbaugh

It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

My favorite figure of the American author is that of a man who breeds a favorite dog, which he throws into the Mississippi River for the pleasure of making a splash. The river does not splash, but it drowns the dog. ~ Henry Adams

A carriage will start from Washington in the morning, the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup in New York the same day ... Engines will drive boats 10 or 12 miles an hour, and there will be hundreds of steamers running on the Mississippi, as predicted years ago. ~ Oliver Evans

I went through all my twenties thinking that I wasn't good enough. ~ Delta Burke

I'll do humor about myself, I'll poke fun and everything, but that's me and I can do it to me. I think it's cruel to do it to somebody else. ~ Delta Burke

I was in elementary school in Mississippi, and when Katrina hit, my mom put me in home school. So ever since sixth grade, I've been home schooled, which was interesting. ~ Israel Broussard

I can't tell you how much I hated him. Not the soap but his sermons and him acting like he was out for the good of everyone....
-Mississippi Trial 1955 ~ Chris Crowe

THE BLUE DRESS

Her blue dress is a silk train is a river
is water seeps into the cobblestone steps of my sleep, is still raining
is monsoon brocade, is winter stars stitched into puddles
is goodbye in a flooded, antique room, is goodbye in a room of crystal bowls
and crystal cups, is the ring-ting-ring of water dripping from the mouths
of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the Mississippi river is a hallway, is leaks
like tears from windowsills of a drowned house, is windows open to waterfalls
is a bed is a small boat is a ship, is a currant come to carry me in its arms
through the streets, is me floating in her dress through the streets
is the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a blue dress
out to sea, is my mother is a moon out to sea. ~ Saeed Jones

I commanded a naval gunboat patrolling the Mekong Delta. Then when I came home after two tours of duty, I decided that the same sense of service demanded something more of me. ~ John F. Kerry

But the book! The siren song of the book! ~ Ellen Douglas

It never registered to them that I had time to read all of Balzac, Dickens, and Stendhal while Papa was dying, not to mention everything in the city library after Mother's operation. It would have been exactly the same to them if I had read through all twenty-six volumes of Elsie Dinsmore. (The White Azalea) ~ Elizabeth Spencer

Well, you have to understand where we came from. We are not here because we decided 10 years ago that we were going to be x-size company, and, oh, yeah, Jackson would be a good headquarters. We work here in Mississippi because we started here, and we are certainly happy here. Those of us working out of Jackson intend to continue working out of Jackson. ~ Bernard Ebbers

If we want to understand the actions of a man in the early 1860's, put yourself back there in his shoes. As a young man he began piloting steamboats on the Mississippi, a job he loved and wanted to do the rest of his life, he said. The Civil War ended traffic on the River and his job. He wrote about it in A History of A Campaign That Failed. He said: "I joined the Confederacy, served for two weeks, deserted, and the Confederacy fell." His attachment to the Southern ideal of slavery does not appear very sturdy. ~ Hal Holbrook

I was supposed to go to drama school and then go to New York and do theatre. But I grew up on all those fabulous movies and had read all the bold Hollywood books, and I thought I just had to take a look. ~ Delta Burke

I'm not a liberal elite who was educated in the northeast, for example, I'm just a kid from Mississippi. ~ Shepard Smith

We concluded that you cannot rely on delta hedging alone. It sounds simplistic to say that now, but back then, this was the sort of thing people were only just beginning to realize. ~ John Hull

I loved living in London, and I didn't want to leave. ~ Delta Burke

You're supposed to remember, and still forgive. ~ Delta Burke

I'm still human - I can't not feel. ~ Delta Goodrem

Oh, definitely and I talk about all the things that I really needed to make me happy at that point in time were outside of Mississippi, and now all the things that I need to make me happy are back there. ~ Sela Ward

The Egyptians of 4000 B.C. believed that the goddess Isis, wife of Osiris, taught them how to grow olives. The Greeks have a similar legend. But the Hebrew word for olive, zait, is probably older than the Greek word, elaia, and is thought to refer to Said in the Nile Delta. ~ Mark Kurlansky

For the good of our environment, the good of the economy, and the good of the Nation, I strongly urge support of the upper Mississippi locks and dams project. ~ Leonard Boswell

One day I know the struggle will change. There's got to be a change-not only for Mississippi, not only for the people in the United States, but people all over the world. ~ Fannie Lou Hamer

In the Spring of 1962, a white postal worker from Baltimore, William Moore, decided to use his ten-day vacation to showcase his passion for Civil Rights. Moore planned a "Freedom Walk" from Chattanooga, Tennessee, across Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi, where he would confront Governor Ross Barnett about the injustice of racial segregation. Moore, who had a history of psychiatric illness, entered Alabama wearing signs that read MISSISSIPPI OR BUST, END SEGREGATION IN AMERICA, and EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL MEN. The much-publicized march ended tragically, when Moore's body was found on a roadside near Gadsen, Alabama - he had been shot to death. ~ Jeffrey K. Smith

What did I want?
I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get u feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur--I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be--instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say - snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola - something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present.

Often when a southerner reads, the members of the class look at each other, and you can hear them thinking, gee, I can't write like that. The power and force of the land is heard in the piece. These southerners know the names of what shrubs hang over what creek, what dogwood flowers bloom what color, what kind of soil is under their feet.

I tease the class, "Pay no mind. It's the southern writing gene. The rest of us have to toil away. ~ Natalie Goldberg

It's easy to whip up resentment against anything that smacks with authority. Nobody ever organizes over pan handlers. So even if a cop is black, like the three arrested in Baltimore, or one dead in Mississippi, the hard left uses race as the underlying cause. It's why there are no defiant marches when policemen are killed. ~ Greg Gutfeld

I could see the cat was definitely on the steps. Still on the steps, 20 minutes after Carl's call. This was strange; Amy loved the cat. The cat was declawed, the cat was never let outside, never ever, because the cat ... was sweet, but extremely stupid ... Amy knew she'd never see the cat again if he ever got out. The cat would waddle straight into the Mississippi River, "deedlie-dum," and float all the way to the Gulf of Mexico into the maw of a hungry bull shark. But it turned out, the cat wasn't even smart enough to get past the steps. ~ Gillian Flynn

Algiers was on the brink.

Before being recruited by the CIA, she had been a member of the ISA, known as "the Activity," one of the last truly dark units
within the DOD. Her job was to collect actionable intelligence for Special Operations units like Delta and SEAL Team 6.


Her decision to leave the Army was the only time Meg hadn't listened to her father, General "Black Jack" Harden. Not only
did he want her to stay in, but he was willing to call in some favors after she got passed over for major.


"I appreciate it, Dad, but I don't take charity," she had told him.

"All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and play the game. How hard is that?" he'd demanded. The Army was his life and
to this day he still didn't understand why she'd left ~ Sean Parnell

As with many Southern Writers, I believe that the special quality of the land itself indelibly shapes the people who dwell upon it. ~ Willie Morris

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right. ~ Maya Angelou