Quotes About Southern Writers

#1. 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

#2. Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

Erskine Caldwell

#3. I reckon Southern writers are a lot like biscuit makers...more than one can give ya a good feed.

Lola Faye Arnold

#4. I am very indebted to southern writers and not just Flannery O'Connor. Also Harry Crews, Larry Brown, Tennessee Williams, Barry Hannah and William Gay.

Donald Ray Pollock

#5. Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

Flannery O'Connor

#6. Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it. (Softly) Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it.

Lillian Hellman

#7. {Summertime she speaks of winter, she eats ham, but speaks of beef, got a good man but, flirts with another. She might as well go to hell, cause she ain't gonna be happy in heaven either!}

Nancy B. Brewer

#8. Humans need each other for equilibrium and support. But writers must pull aside to take a quiet walk alone, not just for the sake of serenity but to hear the Voice inside. That is how the storyteller connects with with others--listen, write, share.

Patricia Hickman

#9. I started out hoping to remind people at some point in the novel that we should be loving and kind. But then the theme usurped my life, spilling over into my novels until love was no longer a small voice, but now my purpose as a writer.

Patricia Hickman

#10. And on 25 January of each year and for many days before it and after it there is not an hour in the day or night when a Burns Supper is not taking place somewhere on this earth.

Len G. Murray

#11. I began to doubt that I would ever know the truth of what transpired, or who those people really were. But all that changed one rainy August afternoon, when I was surprised by a dead man who had answers.

James Caskey

#12. Those bastards had driven me into a trap; Cyclops ate the trap.

Kresley Cole

#13. Today, girls,' said Miss Renshaw, 'we shall go out into the beautiful Gardens and think about death.

Ursula Dubosarsky

#14. Perspective and perseverance are carved by time and constructed by wisdom.

A.D. Sams

#15. Magic of Southern expressions? Similes and metaphorical allusions. They are the yellow highlighter of conversation.

Tim Heaton

#16. The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#17. But I was not obeying the first and greatest commandment - to love God first - nor is it clear that I was obeying the second - to love my neighbour. Hating the oppressors of my neighbour isn't perhaps quite what Christ had in mind.

Sheldon Vanauken

#18. Farm labor had stained his hands, but music stained his heart.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#19. My mother's dress bears the stains of her life:
blueberries, blood, bleach,
and breast milk;
She cradles in her arms a lifetime
of love and sorrow;
Its brilliance nearly blinds me.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#20. Writers need light. They always tell you this, as though they're parched, as though they're plants, as though the page they're working on would look completely different with a southern exposure.

Meg Wolitzer

#21. Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

Flannery O'Connor

#22. To be a saint is to be a little out of one's mind, which is a very good thing to be a little out of from time to time. It is to live a life that is always giving itself away and yet is always full.

Frederick Buechner

#23. I believe that the truth of any subject only comes when all sides of the story are put together.

Alice Walker

#24. Flannery O'Connor, in a note to the editor of "Wise Blood" that pertained to changes he wanted to make, wrote "Perhaps I am prematurely arrogant ...

Flannery O'Connor

#25. Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out.

Winston Churchill

#26. Suffer not thy wrongs to shroud thy fate, But turn, my soul, to blessings which remain.

Anna Seward

#27. What we have ... is something most folks wait a lifetime for, and only touch for a heartbeat. They let go too quickly, or they're too scared to hold on, or they never see what's right in front of them. But we're going to hold on as tight as we can. - Jonah Walker

Molli Moran

#28. Are you aware that Jesus Christ can spell? I get so tired of you spelling every slang and cuss word that crosses your mind, as though you are pulling one over on the Lord.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#29. It takes thirty-three days to write a book
only thirty-three days. remember, writers lie for a living.

Darynda Jones

#30. Shut your eyes," said Miss Tanner.
"Oh no," said Miranda, "for then I see worse things ...

Katherine Anne Porter

#31. Kevin knew he had to always outrun the enemy inside him, and if that meant playing football, he'd do it. During puberty, he had taken off running and found too late that he couldn't stop. In dreams that turned into nightmares he ran in fear, ripped from sleep in a sweat, shouting,"Run!

Brenda Sutton Rose

#32. The woods are full of regional writers, and it is the great horror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them.

Flannery O'Connor

#33. Maybe these dreams of ours just floats away. Here we go again ... changin' face.

Randolph Randy Camp

#34. He takes a draw on a cigarette, blows out a smoky ghost. I reach to catch the phantom in my hands, but it eludes me. I've been trying to catch a ghost for as long as I can remember.

Brenda Sutton Rose

#35. The central character is an incomplete package of yearning that takes the length of the novel to complete. Completion, though, is not to be confused with perfection.

Patricia Hickman

#36. Songs. Books. Poetry. Paintings. These things reveal truth. I believe lies and truth are tangled together.

Brenda Sutton Rose