#southerners

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

#coming-of-age-stories #growing-up #southern-fiction #southern-gothic #southerners

She said that it was a mistake to have made as few superficial friends as I have done in my life, and to have concentrated only on the few things I have concentrated on--her, for one. My children, for another. Sportswriting and being an ordinary citizen. This did not leave me well enough armored for the unexpected, was her opinion. She said this was because I didn't know my parents very well, had gone to a military school, and grown up in the south, which was full of betrayers and secret-keepers and untrustworthy people, which I agree is true, though I never knew any of them. ↗

— Richard Ford

#southerners #life

Southerners have never been afraid of seasoning. It's kind of the other way around; our seasoning is afraid of us. ↗

— Paula Deen

#around #been #kind #never #other

I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#badly #critical #environment #especially #had

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners. ↗

— Robert Morgan

#among #being #best #contemporaries #days

Southerners are also like ethnic groups in that they have a sense of group identity. ↗

— John Shelton Reed

#ethnic #ethnic groups #group #groups #identity

Every Southerner, I think, knows people like Bill Clinton, maybe not quite as smart and maybe not quite as liberal, but kind of a glad-handing, country-club yuppie Southerner. The problem is we don't have labels for middle-class Southerners. ↗

— John Shelton Reed

#bill clinton #clinton #every #i #i think

Southerners smile more than other Americans. ↗

— John Shelton Reed

#other #smile #southerners #than

I can see why many Southerners, black ones in particular, don't like the implication that Southernness and the Confederate heritage are one and the same, because they're not. On the other hand, there are people who want to extirpate that completely and want folks to spit on the graves of their ancestors. ↗

— John Shelton Reed

#because #black #completely #confederate #folks

If you care to define the South as a poor, rural region with lousy race relations, that South survives only in geographical shreds and patches and most Southerners don't live there any more. ↗

— John Shelton Reed

#care #define #geographical #live #lousy