Top 57 Southern Fiction Quotes
#1. Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.
Robert Morgan
#2. It might be late September, but is was hot as the six shades of hell.
Charlaine Harris
#3. The conflict each day is whether to immerse in books or writing. I can't do one without the other, but I can't do both at the same time. It is the writer's paradox.
Patricia Hickman
#4. They later moved to a tin-roof house that was situated in a gas field under a spectacular flare that burned all the time. Big copper-green beetles the size of mice came from all over the Southland to see it and die in it. At night their corpses pankled down on the tin roof.
Charles Portis
#5. Seasons didn't come behind the nicotine-stained walls of Mountain City's prison, so Harm always imagined it spring--the locust trees clustered with shaggy white blooms, the wet woods flecked with bloodroot, and wild roses and honeysuckle flashing white among the chestnuts on the mountainsides...
Sharyn McCrumb
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. I'd always thought of him as one of those fat catfish swimming in the Catawba River, trudging along the bottom with his belly in the mud, his mouth open, feeding on whatever he came across.
Wiley Cash
#9. There were thousands of children just like her in the world. She had walked through the fire and come out the other side scorched, but not consumed by it.
J.L. Murphey
#10. Raw Living: Picking blackberries, beneath late afternoon sun; a sunset reminiscent of watermelon sangria, as the scent of honeysuckle accosts me and the ducks waddle into the lake. Thanking Mama Nature for her abundance. Loving this candied-sweet southern life.
Brandi L. Bates
#11. Georgia Author Brenda Sutton Rose captures some of the conflicted and captivating characters of a rapidly changing South.
Janisse Ray
#12. Although I wasn't there to bear witness, I imagine Lot's wife scanned the masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize her children, grown now. She looked back as I and any strong, loving mother would have done.
Brenda Sutton Rose
#14. The only thing that ever leaves this place is that muddy water in the Rappahannock.
Randolph Randy Camp
#15. Dogwood Blues by Brenda Sutton Rose is a masterful work of classic small-town fiction.
Janice Daugharty
#16. Easy for you to say," Polly said. "You've lived here all your life and stayed under the radar. No one points at you."
"Sometimes small children point at my butt," Aunt Rhea said. "But that's just on account of all the fried chicken.
Kathy Hepinstall
#17. Ain't nothing too serious. Even death is a joke on the old devil, if we are living for the Lord.
Nancy B. Brewer
#18. If you want vampires and werewolves, faeries, fallen angels or zombies, you won't find them here. I know a real-life monster.
Stephanie Lawton
#19. We don't always get what we want. And sometimes, when we do, it's not worth the price.
Stephanie Lawton
#20. 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
#21. Well, honey, it is the south. These debutantes know how to verbally kick anyone's ass. They learned it from their mamas in the womb.
Magan Vernon
#23. His eyes settled due west and gazed through the silhouetted, leaf-bare branches to the now-black rolling hills of the mountains he called home. The sun was setting on another day in Laurel Cove, though he couldn't help but wonder what was rising on the horizon.
Teresa Tysinger
#24. Nothing helps your partner keep his mind on Jesus more than having a sign of His love tanned on your primary erogenous zones.
Scott B. Pruden
#26. We all have scars. Just because mine are hidden doesn't make them any less painful.
Nicki Salcedo
#27. Somewhere, a rattlesnake strike makes the dance begin. Three hawks float in the light blue sky overhead. Crows caw and the sweet seduction of lavender fills my head. And she waltzes through my thoughts.
Hunter S. Jones
#28. {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
#29. With time, grief has a way of slipping down in the crevices of your heart. It never really leaves; it just makes room for more.
Nancy B. Brewer
#30. Sea and land may lie between us, but my heart is always there with you.
Nancy B. Brewer
#31. In favor of southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for preserving polite fiction at the expense of human life.
Harper Lee
#32. I look at you, Mrs. Emily. I see your eyes smile before your lips. Your hair has a curl that droops onto your forehead when the weather is humid . . .
I look at you too, Sabine. I see you.
Phyllis H. Moore
#33. It felt like I had a thousand packs of Strawberry Pop Rocks simultaneously detonating in my chest, and I dilated at least eight centimeters!
Piper Faust
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. At 2:00 sharp on the afternoon of his internment, with his body resting in a casket in the front room of his home, the pallbearers--all bridge players--stuck a deck of cards in Mr. Hampton's cold hands, shut the lid over his head, and played bridge.
Brenda Sutton Rose
#37. Maybe these dreams of ours just floats away. Here we go again ... changin' face.
Randolph Randy Camp
#38. Serving time doesn't make you fit to do anything but serve more time.
Donald Hays
#39. Writing is an act of faith. One must believe and see people who are invisible to others and be faithful to tell half formed stories. It's like being on the trail of an apparition who's repeatedly just out of reach.
K. Youngblood
Katherine Imogene Youngblood
#40. 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
#41. As he farmed, hard labor left his hands callused, the sun bleached his hair, his face leathered, and his heart throbbed with music.
Brenda Sutton Rose
#42. Like the magnolia tree,
She bends with the wind,
Trials and tribulation may weather her,
Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms,
See her standing there, like steel,
With her roots forever buried,
Deep in her Southern soil.
Nancy B. Brewer
#43. The mind of man can only teach what he has learned from others. It is how you use that knowledge that will decide who you are.
Micheal Rivers
#44. That's the trouble with innocents. They aren't innocent of doing, just of knowing what they're doing.
Jack Butler
#45. There are two things I am afraid of. One is dying young. The other is Johnny Monroe.
Susan Gabriel
#46. Their eyes locked. Again, heat rose to Livy's cheeks. He needed to stop looking at her that way. She never should have noticed the captivating hue of his sky-blue eyes. When was the last time a man flustered her like this. Maybe never.
Teresa Tysinger
#47. Christians are the salt of the earth ... Nothing grows where they've been.
Donald Hays
#48. 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
#49. Wild steep mountains floating in a haze of cloud...a sea of green trees swallowing the hills and valleys, and curling around the trails and rivers, with the wind in the leaves as its tide.
Sharyn McCrumb
#51. 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
#52. When we became teenagers boredom grew like a moth in a cocoon fighting to escape, and the peace created by our parents became a prison. We sought excitement and adventure. We sought anything but the sinless, pure, and average of the faux idyllic.
Scott Thompson
#53. It wasn't that she believed in voodoo, precisely - but she believed in the people who believed in voodoo - and that was scary enough.
-Coralee Ayers
Caitlin Rush
#54. The ultimate downfall of the computerized holographic receptionist was that there was no amount of flattery, flirtation or chocolate that could convince one to lie for you.
Scott B. Pruden
#55. Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.
Barbara Kingsolver
#56. She turned her painted blue eyes toward the assistant and said something in French before she left.
Nancy B. Brewer
#57. I reckon it's true what they say that good begets good and bad begets bad. The evil men do lives on after them, but what good they done gets buried with their bones.
Lisa Kaye Presley
