Mississippi Quotes

“They had buried him under our elm tree, they said -- yet this was not totally true. For he really lay buried in my heart.”
― Willie Morris, My Dog Skip

“I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.”
― Eudora Welty (One Writer's Beginnings)

“Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, Let the Circle Be Unbroken

“Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan 'Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less'—with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be—locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore—was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as senator Mitch McConnell put it, 'in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty'. By the time the infamous 'Drill Baby Drill' Republican national convention rolled around, the party base was in such a frenzy for US-made fossil fuels, they would have bored under the convention floor if someone had brought a big enough drill.”
― Naomi Klein

“Stay fit and live long and prosper, but write your own obituary now, while you can, just in case.”
― Jill Conner Browne, The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love: A Fallen Southern Belle's Look at Love, Life, Men, Marriage, and Being Prepared

“White ain't nothing.'
Mama's grip did not lessen. 'It is something, Cassie. White is something just like black is something. Everybody born on this Earth is something, and nobody, no matter what color is better than anybody else.'
'Then how come Mr. Simms don't know that.'
'Because he's one of those people who has to believe that white people are better than black people to make himself feel big.'
I stared questionably at Mama, not really understanding.
Mama squeezed my hadn't and explained further, 'You see, Cassie, many years ago, when our people were fist brought from Africa in chains to work as slaves in this country--'
'Like Big Ma's Papa and Mama?'
Mama nodded. "Yes, baby. Like Papa Luke and Mama Rachael. Except they were born right here is Mississippi, but their grandparents were born in Africa. And when they came, there was some white people who thought that is was wrong for any people to be slaves. So the people who needed slaves to work in their fields and the people who were making money bringing slaves from Africa preached that black people weren't really people like white people were, so slavery was all right. They also said that slavery was good for us because it thought us to be good Christians, like the white people.'
She sighed deeply, her voice fading into a distant whisper, 'But they didn't teach us Christianity to save our souls, but to teach us obedience. They were afraid of slave revolts and they wanted us to learn the Bible's teachings about slaves being loyal to their masters. But even teaching Christianity didn't make us stop wanting to be free and many slaves ran away.”
― Mildred D. Taylor

“Humans are aware of very little, it seems to me, the artificial brainy side of life, the worries and bills and the mechanisms of jobs, the doltish psychologies we've placed over our lives like a stencil. A dog keeps his life simple and unadorned.”
― Brad Watson, Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories

“Sit on the truth too long and you mash the life right out of it.”
― Margaret McMullan, Sources of Light

“The sky had cleared, and now the sun was overhead, already baking the wet ground so that you could see the humidity drifting lazily above the cotton stalks.”
― John Grisham, A Painted House

“A thousand times, when the train slowed or stopped, I thought of jumping off. I wanted to die in a ditch. I wanted to disappear. I wanted a different history and geography. In rhythm with the wheels I said I want I want I want I want I stayed on the train.”
― Lewis Nordan, Music of the Swamp

“The moon was obscured by heavy clouds. January was already past the mid-mark and the early delta spring would soon be on them. Already on the night was the faint, fresh smell of buddings and the intimacy that comes from the warm delta air trapped between slumbering earth and lowering clouds.”
― Leslie H. Whitten Jr., Moon of the Wolf

“Generally the first week in September brings the hottest weather of the year, and this was no exception. Overhead the fans turned slow, their paddle blades stirring the air up close to the ceiling but nowheres else...”
― Shelby Foote, Follow Me Down

“Louis said, "There ought to be a comic book about geeks."

Dr. McNaughton said, "There are books about geeks."

He said, "There are?"

Dr. McNaughton said, "I'll read you some Faulkner sometime. I'll read you some Eudora Welty, some Flannery O'Connor. Geeks, midgets, anything your heart desires. Better than comic books."

Louis looked at his father. He said, "You'll read to me? Really?”
― Lewis Nordan, The Sharpshooter Blues

“As she drove the Trace, each curve revealing a scene rich with life and as picturesque as illustrations from a children's book, Anna was struck again by the beauty of the state. Over her years as a Yankee and a Westerner, she'd heard Mississippi described many ways. Beautiful had never been one of them.”
― Nevada Barr, Deep South

“The Mississippi Delta is not always dark with rain. Some autumn mornings, the sun rises over Moon Lake, or Eagle, or Choctaw, or Blue, or Roebuck, all the wide, deep waters of the state, and when it does, its dawn is as rosy with promise and hope as any other.”
― Lewis Nordan, Wolf Whistle

“J.W. and Roy didn’t just snatch the childhood away from Emmett; they stole it from every single black child in Mississippi.”
― Bernice McFadden

“My rhythm was joined with that of the Mississippi seasons. To change would shift everything inside of me...”
― Carolyn Haines, Them Bones

“The only thing worse than saying something boring is to quote someone else's boring saying”
― Lee Owens

“They cried. Yes, yes, they cried. Cried more tears than the Mississippi could hold, but those tears never washed away their faith…”
― Andrew Galasetti, These Colors Don't Run

“Even Solon Gregg was finding it hard to speak to a woman who had just paid hard cash for tampons and on her face wore the look of a woman who meant to use them, as advertised.”
― Lewis Nordan, Wolf Whistle

“I know why the best blues artist comes from Mississippi,” Hooker told an interviewer from Melody Maker in 1964. “Because it’s the worst state. You have the blues all right if you’re down in Mississippi.”
― Ted Gioia, Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

“You said you left Mississippi in 1854," Ron says. He turns to Mamuwalde and asks "Were you a runaway slave?"

"Not at all," Cindy Lou answers. "Daddy freed him."

Ron's jaw almost hits the floor. His wine glass does.”
― Daven Anderson, Vampire Syndrome

“That's what a White man had to do to return to Parchman, even if he was free because he had escaped: a White man had to murder.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

“People seemed uniquely printed to believe in plots and conspiracies, miracles and demons.”
― Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

“Legal segregation was long gone, but a strong tradition prevailed in both communities that it was best to live separately.”
― Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

“Mariah and I had never thought so much about race and racism in our lives. It was the great underlying obsession of the Mississippi delta. The elephant in every room. Almost every charming, gracious, hospitable, generous white landowner we met came from a family that had profited from an American version of apartheid. Or more accurately a blueprint for the South African version.”
― Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

“A kind of affectionate racism prevailed among the delta gentry, they had kind, paternalistic feelings toward black people and a genuine appreciation for black culture, but they didn’t want a black man dating their daughters or sitting down to eat dinner at their table, because that wasn’t the way things were done or meant to be.”
― Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

“Redgunk is a place of swamp gas illusion; of slimy frogs and bumpy toads singing to the stars; and of people, who, like the frogs, attain even in the midst of their most vulgar sounds something like the solemn ringing, the joyous and melancholy singing of the holy.”
― William R. Eakin, Welcome to Redgunk: Tales From One Weird Mississippi Town

“Let me guess. Pickup trucks. Shotguns. I bet your family still believes the South will rise again. And you ditched them all for the first ticket out of town."
Insults spray like buckshot, but I ignore her scoffs. There's no point in telling her the truth---that my hometown is a literary mecca filled with poet laureates and Pulitzer winners, a university community more diverse and well-read than any she's probably visited, much less called home.”
― Julie Cantrell, Perennials

“A quiet

snowglobe of pain
I want to shake.
While the flakes fall

like ash we race
the train to reach the place
Emmett Till last

whistled or smiled
or did nothing.”
― Kevin Young