Southern Setting Quotes

This summer had been about finding herself, and learning to accept love in its various forms
and to give love. - Quinn Reynolds ~ Molli Moran

Magical realism is a blending of the unusual or supernatural into an otherwise ordinary setting. And, to me, this perfectly describes the South. 'The Sugar Queen' involves a lot of magical happenings, but in a very down-home Southern setting. It's full of things that could almost be true. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

In preparing for this ceremony," Kai said, setting the bouquet on the mantel behind him, "I did some research and learned that the word Alpha has held many meanings across history. Alpha can refer to the first of something," said Kai, "or the beginning of everything. It can be attributed to a particularly powerful or charismatic person, or it can signify the dominant leader in a pack of animals, most notably, of course, wolves." His serious expression tweaked briefly into a teasing smile. "It has meanings in chemistry, physics, and even astronomy, where it describes the brightest star in a constellation. But it seems clear that Ze'ev and Scarlet have created their own definition for the word, and their relationship has given this word a new meaning for all of us. Being an Alpha means that you'll stand against all adversity to be with your mate. It means accepting each other, both for your strengths and your flaws. It means forging your own path to happiness and to love. ~ Marissa Meyer

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from the Port of London; and having brought a chart of the Thames on deck at his first setting out, should obstinately use no other for the whole voyage. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A true southern lady can out manipulate General Lee when it comes to revenge. ~ Liliana Hart

If you're setting up lights and tripods, and you've got three assistants running around, people will want to get you out as fast as they can. But if you go the opposite way, if you make the camera the least important thing in the room, then it's different. ~ D. A. Pennebaker

In 2014, the Earth's gravity is weakest in southern India (blue spot) and strongest in Iceland and Indonesia (red spots). ~ Kip S. Thorne

I was too awestruck to speak. Vines of bright pink flowers danced over a wrought-iron arbor. I recognized them immediately as the very same variety, bougainvillea, that grew in Greenhouse No. 4 at the New York Botanical Garden. Just beyond, two potted trees stood at attention- a lemon, its shiny yellow globes glistening in the sunlight, and what looked like an orange, studded with the tiniest fruit I'd ever seen.
"What is this?" I asked, fascinated.
"A kumquat," she said. "Lady Anna used to pick them for the children." She reached out to pluck one of the tiny oranges from the tree. "Here, try for yourself."
I held it in my hand, admiring its smooth, shiny skin.
I sank my teeth into the flesh of the fruit. Its thin skin disintegrated in my mouth, releasing a burst of sweet and sour that made my eyes shoot open and a smile spread across my face. "Oh, my," I said. "I've never had anything like it."
Mrs. Dilloway nodded. "You should try the clementines, then. They're Persian."
I walked a few paces further, admiring the potted orchids- at least a hundred specimens, so exquisite they looked like Southern belles in hoop skirts. On the far wall were variegated ferns, bleeding hearts, and a lilac tree I could smell from the other end of the room. ~ Sarah Jio

The law presumably says that it is finest to keep as quiet as possible in misfortunes and not be irritated, since the good and bad in such things aren't plain, nor does taking it hard get one anywhere, not are any of the human things worthy of great seriousness ... One must accept the fall of the dice and settle one's affairs accordingly
in whatever way argument declares would be best. One must not behave like children who have stumbled and who hold on to the hurt place and spend their time in crying out; rather one must always habituate the soul to turn as quickly as possible to curing and setting aright what has fallen and is sick, doing away with lament by medicine. ~ Socrates

When she slowly straightened, the land was vast before her. The sun was setting down the river, casting a cold pink hue along the white-capped mountains that framed both sides of the valley. Upriver, the willow shrubs and gravel bars, the spruce forests and low-lying poplar stands, swelled to the mountains in steely blue. No fields or fences, homes or roads; not a single living soul as far as she could see in any direction. Only wilderness. ~ Eowyn Ivey

Trust. It is like placing a blade in someone's hand and setting the very point to your heart. ~ Cassandra Clare

She climbed down the cliffs after tying her sweater loosely around her waist. Down below she could see nothing but jagged rocks and waves. She was creful, but I watched her feet more than the view she saw- I worried about her slipping.
My mother's desire to reach those waves, touch her feet to another ocean on the other side of the country, was all she was thinking of- the pure baptismal goal of it. Whoosh and you can start over again. Or was life more like the horrible game in gym that has you running from one side of an enclosed space to another, picking up and setting down wooden blocks without end? She was thinking reach the waves, the waves, the waves, and I was watching her navigate the rocks, and when we heard her we did so together- looking up in shock.
It was a baby on the beach.
In among the rocks was a sandy cove, my mother now saw, and crawling across the sand on a blanket was a baby in knitted pink cap and singlet and boots. She was alone on the blanket with a stuffed white toy- my mother thought a lamb.
With their backs to my mother as she descended were a group of adults-very official and frantic-looking- wearing black and navy with cool slants to their hats and boots. Then my wildlife photographer's eye saw the tripods and silver circles rimmed by wire, which, when a young man moved them left or right, bounced light off or on the baby on her blanket.
My mother started laughing, but only one assistant turned to notice her up among t ~ Alice Sebold

How do you know about Leotta?"
It wasn't like I could tell him that Cephus Hardy was dead and right there about to give him the smackdown, nor could I tell him that I had seen his old Buick parked in front of Higher Ground when I acted like I had no idea he had a car and offered him a ride.
"Isn't she still married to Cephus Hardy?" My eyes zeroed in on his facial expression.
Cephus jumped around me and grabbed Terk by the neck. "Yeah, you sonofabitch!"
"Stop!" I yelled, but it was too late. ~ Tonya Kappes

It was the Tower. The Dark Tower. It stood on the horizon of a vast plain the color of blood in the violent setting of a dying sun. He couldn't see the stairs which spiraled up and up and up within its brick shell, but he could see the windows which spiraled up along that staircase's way, and saw the ghosts of all the people he had ever known pass through them. Up and up they marched, and an arid wind brought him the sound of voices calling his name. ~ Stephen King

As I wrote Working toward Whiteness, I came to see one historic task on the New Deal - and one in which it succeeded - as the fostering of fuller U.S. citizenship among immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and their kids. But this very achievement separated poorer and often despised immigrant workers from Europe and workers of color in unprecedented ways. ~ David Roediger

Like a lot of rural places, southern Illinois is basically a bunch of small towns knit together, a Babel's Tower mix of rednecks, rubes, freaks, tweakers, gun nuts, and aging hippies--real hippies, not the newfangled crunchy kids they're turning out these days--who'd fled into the dark-licked hills sometime during the bloodiest days of a war that wouldn't stop shaping their lives and had never come out. ~ Jason Miller

Now, to tell my story
if not as it ought to be told, at least as I can tell it,
I must go back sixteen years, to the days when Whitbury boasted of forty coaches per diem, instead of one railway, and set forth how in its southern suburb, there stood two pleasant house side by side, with their gardens sloping down to the Whit, and parted from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends. ~ Charles Kingsley

What I find difficult, when I read, is to encounter other people's achievements passed off as one's own. I find it difficult to discover literary tradition so warmly embraced and coddled, as if artists existed merely to have flagrant intercourse with the past, guaranteed to draw a crowd but also certain to cover that crowd in an old, heavy breading. I find it difficult when a narrative veers toward soap opera, when characters are explained by their childhoods, when setting is used as spackle to hold together chicken-wire characters who couldn't even stand up to an artificial wind, when depictions of landscape are intermissions while the author catches his breath and gets another scene ready. I find writing difficult that too readily subscribes to the artistic ideas of other writers, that willingly accepts language as a tool that must be seen and not heard, that believes in happy endings, easy revelations, and bittersweet moments of self-understanding. I find writing difficult that could have been written by anyone. That's difficult to me, horribly so. Mr. Difficult? It's not Gaddis. Mr. Difficult is the writer willing to sell short the aims of literature, to serve as its fuming, unwanted ambassador, to apologize for its excesses or near misses, its blind alleys, to insult the reading public with film-ready versions of reality and experience and inner sensations, scenes flying jauntily by under the banner of realism, which lately grants it full critical immunity. ~ Ben Marcus

In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

MY LIFE IS a beautiful tragedy. A sad love story on an endless loop. The players may evolve and the setting may change, but it's always the same. Love. Pain. Death. Repeat. ~ S.L. Jennings

There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others. ~ Mandy Hale

The solidity of the building, its quite interiors, the monumental presence of its white facade in the middle of the city- in all its deliberate order and calm, the hotel underlined its separateness from its setting. Its effect was felt most keenly by the menial staff, who traveled each day from their homes in the flood-threatened outskirts of Allahabad and approached their place of work with something like awe. They looked very ill at ease in their green uniforms and were obsequiously polite with guests, calling to mind the Indians who had come to serve in the new city of Allahabad built by the British after the rude shock of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the city whose simple colonial geography was plain from my sixth-floor hostel room, the railway tracks partitioning the congested "black town," with its minarets and temple domes, from the tree-lined grid of "white town," where for a long period no Indians, apart from servants, could appear in native dress. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Change the setting, change the mood ... She'd taught him to make himself go outside if he was in, or inside if he was out, to interrupt the plummet with something as simple as making a cup of tea or spending a few minutes working on crossword puzzles. ~ Jennifer Weiner

Nothin very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? --I explain that, Mr
Bones,
terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety.
Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr Bones?
--If life is a handkerchief sandwich,

in a modesty of death I join my father
who dared so long agone leave me.
A bullet on a concrete stoop
close by a smothering southern sea
spreadeagled on an island, by my knee.
--You is from hunger, Mr Bones,

I offers you this handkerchief, now set
your left foot by my right foot,
shoulder to shoulder, all that jazz,
arm in arm, by the beautiful sea,
hum a little, Mr Bones.
--I saw nobody coming, so I went instead. ~ John Berryman

When ideas evaporate, when shapes fade and forms lose their integrity, our imagination can create an outlandish setting and convert everything into a hazy, misty Turner landscape. ("Back garden of a dream") ~ Erik Pevernagie

The southern half of Riverskin was indistinguishable from Flyside, which it adjoined. It was cheap and not too violent, crowded, mostly good-natured. It was a mixed area, with a large human majority beside small colonies of vodyanoi by the quiet canal, a few solitary outcast cactacae, even a little two-street khepri hive, a rare traditional community outside of Kinken and Creekside. Southern Riverskin was also home to some of the city's small number of more exotic races. There was a shop run by a hotchi family in Bekman Avenue, their spines carefully filed blunt so as not to intimidate their neighbours. There was a homeless llorgiss, which kept its barrel body full of drink and staggered the streets on three unsteady legs. ~ China Mieville

If you do nothing but urge people to "look out for number one," you will be setting them up for future failure in any relationship, especially marriage. ~ Timothy Keller

Let you peel off all the remaining layers of nagging bitterness, annoyance & grievances from the past to create more space for new energy, spirit & vigor to organically grow in your life. Let you revamp whatever has been crumbling within your life so far & focus on setting up plans for this #newyear with genuine intentions in your heart to make all the magic & miracles a reality for yourself & your world. Let you start feeling better, uncluttered, unburdened, delighted & motivated to start creating the exact life you always wanted & deserve. Let you focus on your persistent good deeds, reflecting your sacred abilities, grace, love & happiness, remaining calm & patient making your future to fluidly flow. Stay Successful & Blessed! ~ Rajesh Goyal

Germany is Europe's heart. But bitterness is widespread. Currently the Germans hate the Greeks and the Greeks hate the Germans. The demonization of the country has to stop if we want a strong Europe. So I am setting a positive example. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

One of these days lightning is going to fill the sky from the
rising of the sun to its setting, and there is going to appear in the
clouds one like a son of man with his mighty angels in flaming
fire. And we will see him clearly. And whether from terror or
sheer excitement, we will tremble and we will wonder how, how
we ever lived so long with such a domesticated, harmless Christ. ~ John Piper

And really it would profit little to write down what they said, for they knew each other so well that they could say anything they liked, which is tantamount to saying nothing, or saying such stupid, prosy things, as how to cook an omelette, or where to buy the best boots in London, which have no lustre taken from their setting, yet are positively of amazing beauty within it. For it has come about, by the wise economy of nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language; the commonest expressions do, since no expressions do; hence, the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic, and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down. For which reasons we leave a great blank here, which must be taken to indicate that the space is filled to repletion. ~ Virginia Woolf

I want to forewarn you," Bryon says seriously. "It's very possible that I may start talking with a southern accent."
"That's all right as long as I can do my British accent."
He squints and shakes his head. "No. That's stupid. Those don't even match. Can you do a country backwoods toothless mumble? Because that'll work. ~ Cheryl McIntyre

Yeah, there's stuff that really good fiction can do that other forms of art can't do as well. And the big thing, the big thing seems to be, sort of leapin' over that wall of self, and portraying inner experience. And setting up, I think, a kind of intimate conversation between two consciences. ~ David Lipsky

There are a few of the open-air spirits; the more domestic of their tribe gather within-doors, plentiful as swallows under southern eaves. ~ William Butler Yeats

There is nothing more trite than a period room imposed on a contemporary setting. ~ Van Day Truex

The pursuit of excellence with unrestrained passion can lead to the accomplishment of wonders with unsurpassed joy. ~ Aberjhani

The ring is a copy of my mother's. I took the stone from her engagement ring and had a jeweler place it in a titanium setting."
"Titanium?" I asked.
"Dick knew a guy."
"Of course he did."
"You're a bit rough and tumble with jewelry, and I knew it would have to be able to stand up to ... "
"Nuclear winter?"
His eyebrow lifted. "I never know with you. ~ Molly Harper

Worry is negative goal setting. ~ Brian Tracy

I think that's what's great about being an actress is you get to learn so many different things like that, like learning a little bit of Tibetan here, learning a Southern accent there. ~ Jaime King