Deep South Quotes

“Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being "false," "untrue," yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.”
― Clark Zlotchew

“When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the moonlight like a black jewel. Ed saw the tiny specks of light around the edges of the bay where he knew ships must be docked, and at different points within the bay where vessels would be anchored. The lights were pale and sickly yellow when compared with the bright blue-white sparkle of the stars overhead, but the stars glinted hard as diamonds, cold as ice. Pg. 26.”
― Clark Zlotchew, Once upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties

“But that’s the thing about East Texas. Red dirt never quite washes out, and pine pollen is tenacious as original sin. You can leave East Texas, for Houston, for the Metroplex, for the Commonwealth, for New York, or Bonn or Tokyo or Kowloon; but you can never quite leave it behind.”
― Markham Shaw Pyle

“No matter where you go in East Texas, ‘Deep’ East Texas is always about twenty miles further in than wherever you are.”
― Markham Shaw Pyle

“In keeping with the Laws of the Prophet Bubba and the Code of the UIL, as set forth in the Book of First Downs, as the sun sets on Friday nights the rites of the Texas state religion are celebrated: high school, smash-mouth football. ‘And lo, the children of Jim Bob do take to the roads in caravans and they do go up unto the stadium by tribes, the Indians of Groveton, the Panthers of Lufkin, the Mustangs of Overton, and the very Wildcats of Palestine, and who shall withstand the traffic jams thereof?’ Thus is it written, and so it is and shall be.”
― Markham Shaw Pyle

“East Texas is red dirt – not red, in sober truth, but the orange of rust, which it basically is, ferrous oxide – and magnolias and azaleas and dogwoods, old fields long since cottoned-out, far from the Mississippi River bottomlands that were ‘rich as six feet up a bull’s ass’: a land of hogs and hominy, and a tangled, grim past of slavery and segregation. It could as easily be the country as far eastwards of the Mississippi as it is west: it would fit all too readily into the area between Brandon and Meridian, Mississippi, hard by the Bienville National Forest.”
― Markham Shaw Pyle

“All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbours was that, if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cooterville, Felchville, Dust Rag, Dough Bag, Uranus Ridge, Big Bottom, Hooter Holler, Quickskillet, Buck Wallow, Possum Strut ... We always say a picture speaks a thousand words, but isn’t the opposite equally true?”
― Sol Luckman, Beginner's Luke

“There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the civil war to defend slavery. And its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery they argued Ad nauseam was the foundation for a virtuous biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states. When 19th century deep southerners spoke of defending their “traditions”, “heritage”, and way of life they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the center piece of all three. Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower class people should be enslaved regardless of race for their own good.
In response to Yankee and midland abolitionist the Deep South’s leaders developed an elaborate defense for human bondage. James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers where happier, fitter and better looked after than their free counter parts in Brittan and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists. Free societies were therefore unstable as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up creating a fearful crisis in republican institutions. Salves by contrast were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist or testify, ensuring the foundation of every well designed and durable republic.
Enslavement of the white working class would be in his words a most glorious act of emancipation. Jefferson’s notion all men are created equal, he wrote, was ridiculously absurd. In the deep southern tradition, Hammond’s republic was modeled on those of ancient Greece and Rome. Featuring rights and democracy for the elite, slavery and submission for inferiors. It was sanctioned by the Christian god whose son never denounced the practice in his documented teachings. It was a perfect aristocratic republic, one that should be a model for the world.
George Fitzhugh endorsed and expanded upon Hammond’s argument to enslave all poor people. Aristocrats, he explained, were really the nations Magna Carta because they owned so much and had the affection which all men feel for what belongs to them. Which naturally lead them to protect and provide for wives, children and slaves. Fitzhugh, whose books were enormously popular declared he was quite as intent on abolishing free society as you northerners are on abolishing slavery.”
― Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

“Querido, a esa anciana le sucedió una cosa sumamente peculiar, le sucedió un poco antes de morir. Le creció barba. Comenzó a salirle en la cara, pelos bastante largos. Eran de color amarillo y fuertes como alambres. Yo la afeitaba, ella estaba paralítica de la cabeza a los pies, su piel era como la de un muerto. Pero aquella barba le crecía tan de prisa que casi no podía mantenerle la cara limpia, y cuando murió, Miss Amy le dijo al barbero del pueblo que viniera. Bueno, señor, el hombre echó un vistazo, volvió a bajar las escaleras y salió por la puerta delantera.”
― Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms

“They remind me that no one saved me and no one will ever have to save me again.
I will save myself.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“Let’s show lots of love for Emmett Till
And fight against bigotry, racism, and hate
Let’s show lots of love for Emmett Till
So humanity can have a better fate”
― Aida Mandic, Turn The Tables

“He was an innocent Black boy in Mississippi
Minding his business, going to the store
He became a Civil Rights movement icon
Emmett Till’s spirit continues to roar

This 14-year-old boy was lynched
Because of a woman named Carolyn Bryant
Who said that he flirted and whistled at her
But it was a lie meant to help evil stir”
― Aida Mandic, Turn The Tables

“I remember what my father said the day he cried. "You'll make it, Peyton. You're strong."
I decide that I will never give up.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“What about the details? You were going to teach me about the details,'
'This is about the big picture, you ought to know that.' His arm slides across the table and just for a moment, the tips of our fingers touch.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“What about the details? You were going to teach me about the details.'
'This is about the big picture, you ought to know that.' His arm slides across the table and just for a moment, the tips of our fingers touch.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“Bathed in the light of those sparkling mirrors, I burn like a star while my partner fades into the shadows. The crowd begins to cheer. I'm the life they thought they lost. I've emerged, their resurrected champion at center ring.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“Your love should be for me, not for my love,' he says. 'There's a difference.'
'It is-- you just won't let me love you. I'm not going to stop trying. You don't want me to stop, do you?'
'No,' he says.
I'll never forget that tiny word and how he said it.
'Then say you love me,' I insist, back throbbing.
'I can't.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“Nature requires rain but it can be destructive, too.'
'Like love?' I ask but he doesn't seem to hear.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“He fights, night after night, to peel my onion soul without caring about it. I never see his tears but his eyes burn as they fill with the putrid smell of my insecurity, anger, and pain. He loves me in glorious bouts of unreserve, swearing I'm all he thinks about and all he wants. Those precious moments are worth the hatred he seems to have for me in the hours and days that come between.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“In time, I'll forgive my mother because forgiveness and love are inseparable; feeding off each other when there's nothing left.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“I realized I'm trapped in the embrace of the one who is breaking my heart.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“Now i know that some of those hidden pearls of truth exist but some are just empty shells that trap us.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“How do you know which friends are real?' I ask.
'They love you; they tell you the truth,' he whispers in my ear.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“Nobody loves me,' I say.
'Somebody does.' Peter runs his hand down my back.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“I envy her ability to tell the entire world what she feels. One day, I'll find a way, too.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“He loved me. He loved me not. Perhaps we'll never know; life is like that. All I know is that once upon a time I saw a powerful glimpse of truth that set me on a new path.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“As children, almost every summer my brother and I found at least one dusty Christmas ball in the corner of the living room or beneath the couch. I always wondered how something so fragile could fall so far and not break.”
― Penelope Przekop, Please Love Me

“I have no naive notions of good and evil. While Kentucky is not the deep south, there is enough of that type of outlaw mentality in the rural areas that Hollywood movies based on corrupt backwoods cops have some credibility. Making someone disappear in the country is actually far easier to do than in a place like New Jersey. Lots of heavily wooded areas and farms to dispose of a body, should one happen to need to. The look in his eyes had scared me. There was clearly something behind them, something I didn’t want to ever see in the full light of day. Things of nightmares. There are places, dark damp hidden places, where things like that dwell, and to look upon them would drive a person mad with fear.”
― John (ronin) Evans, Midnight Falls