Okra Quotes

She finished just after him, scooping out fried corn and an okra-tomato-corn medley on his plate. ~ Alessandra Torre

I spent that many years thinking I was alone. Then you prance into my life, nearly giving me a paroxysm, and now you deign to tell me there are more. ~ Rachel Hartman

This is why we do it all over again every year. Fueled only by the stuff they drink from the air and earth, the bush beans fill out their rows, the okra booms, the corn stretches eagerly toward the sky like a toddler reaching up to put on a shirt ... We gardeners are right in the middle of this with our weeding and tying up, our mulching and watering, our trained eyes guarding against bugs, groundhogs, and weather damage. But to be honest, the plants are working harder, doing all the real production. We are management; they're labor. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I hate okra and grated mountain yam for the same reason. They're both slimy. ~ Tom Colicchio

I have a policy about that word "soul." It is strictly prohibited except in cases of converstations having to do with okra recipes or Marvin Gaye. ~ Sarah Vowell

Man was first a hunter, and an artist: his early vestiges tell us that alone. But he must always have dreamed, and recognized and guessed and supposed, all the skills of the imagination. Language itself is a continuously imaginative act. Rational discourse outside our familiar territory of Greek logic sounds to our ears like the wildest imagination. The Dogon, a people of West Africa, will tell you that a white fox named Ogo frequently weaves himself a hat of string bean hulls, puts it on his impudent head, and dances in the okra to insult and infuriate God Almighty, and that there's nothing we can do about it except abide him in faith and patience.

This is not folklore, or quaint custom, but as serious a matter to the Dogon as a filling station to us Americans. The imagination; that is, the way we shape and use the world, indeed the way we see the world, has geographical boundaries like islands, continents, and countries. These boundaries can be crossed. That Dogon fox and his impudent dance came to live with us, but in a different body, and to serve a different mode of the imagination. We call him Brer Rabbit. ~ Guy Davenport

Usually when I'm stressed, I'll eat everything not nailed down. Only small children and family pets are safe. And okra - I won't eat okra under any circumstances. ~ Sue Ann Jaffarian

As for me, I went inside, walked up to my bedroom, and fell on the floor. What…just happened? Staring at the ceiling, I tried to take it all in. My mind began to race, trying to figure out what it all meant. Do I need to learn how to whittle? Cook fried chicken? Ride a horse? Use a scythe? My face began to feel flushed. And children? Oh, Lord. That means we might have children! What will we name them? Travis and Dolly? Oh my gosh. I have children in my future. I could see it plainly in front of me. They'll be little redheaded children with green eyes just like mine, and they'll have lots of freckles, too. I'll have ten of them, maybe eleven. I'll have to squat in the garden and give birth while picking my okra. Every stereotype of domestic country life came rushing to the surface. A lot of them involved bearing children.
Then my whole body relaxed in a mushy, contended heap as I remembered all the times I'd walked back into that very room after being with Marlboro Man, my cowboy, my savior. I remembered all the times I'd fallen onto my bed in a fizzy state of euphoria, sighing and smelling my shirt to try to get one last whiff. All the times I'd picked up the phone early in the morning and heard his sexy voice on the other end. All the times I'd longed to see him again, two minutes after he'd dropped me off. This was right, this was oh, so right. If I couldn't go a day without seeing him, I certainly couldn't go a lifetime… ~ Ree Drummond

I love fried okra. The fact that it's okra makes me feel like it's good for you - I forget the fact that it's fried. ~ Jason Aldean

When Daddy's garden is ready
it is filled with words that make me laugh
when I say them-
pole beans and tomatoes, okra and corn
sweet peas and sugar snaps,
lettuce and squash.

Who could have imagined

so much color that the ground disappears
and we are left
walking through an autumn's worth
or crazy words
that beneath the magic
of my grandmother's hands

become

side dishes. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

We call that runnin' through the okra patch. ~ Fred Smoot

You children, you forget that no matter how high the okra tree grows, it's never mightier than the hand that planted it. ~ Chika Unigwe

Have you forgotten me?
by Nancy B. Brewer

The bricks I laid or the stitches I sewed.
I was the one that made the quilt; a drop of blood still shows from my needle prick.
Your wedding day in lace and satin, in a dress once worn by me.
I loaned your newborn baby my christening gown, a hint of lavender still preserved.

Do you know our cause, the battles we won and the battles we lost?
When our soldiers marched home did you shout hooray!
Or shed a tear for the fallen sons.

What of the fields we plowed, the cotton, the tobacco and the okra, too.
There was always room at my table for one more,
Fried chicken, apple pie, biscuits and sweet ice tea.

A time or two you may have heard our stories politely told.
Some of us are famous, recorded on the pages of history.
Still, most of us left this world without glory or acknowledgment.

We were the first to walk the streets you now call home,
Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left,
but did you hear me cry out to you?

Listen, my child, to the voices of your ancestors.
Take pride in our accomplishments; find your strength in our suffering.
For WE are not just voices in the wind, WE are a living part of YOU! ~ Nancy B. Brewer

DJ, let Trisha look. She's really good at this doctor thing," Ashna said and Trisha Raje grinned at her as though she had just dropped the deepest curtsy in front of her.
DJ picked up the colander filled with okra and moved to the fryer. "As I've already mentioned, my hands are fine. I hope yours are still worth as much as they were last evening." Definitely a petty bastard.
That made her tilt her head in confusion again. Apparently, you needed no memory at all to get through medical school. Or maybe it was he who needed to have his head examined for remembering every word that had come out of her mouth like some fragile, egotistical half-wit. ~ Sonali Dev

We surf-fished in the breakers catching spottail bass and flounder for dinner. I discovered that summer that I loved to cook and feed my friends, and I enjoyed the sound of their praise as they purred with pleasure at the meals I fixed over glowing iron and fire. I had the run of my grandparents' garden and I would put ears of sweet corn in aluminum foil after washing them in seawater and slathering them with butter and salt and pepper. Beneath the stars we would eat the beefsteak tomatoes okra and the field peas flavored with salt pork and jalapeno peppers. I would walk through the disciplined rows that brimmed with purple eggplants and watermelons and cucumbers, gathering vegetables. My grandfather, Silas, told us that summer that low country earth was so fertile you could drop a dime into it and grow a money tree. ~ Pat Conroy