FANNIE FLAGG

Being an only child and losing both my parents at an early age, I have found that the friends I have made over the years are the people who help me get through life, good times and bad.

Yes, I suffer terribly from depression. I have to work at being happy, it's not my natural instinct. My natural instinct is, if something wonderful happens, to throw water in my own face.

Strangely enough, the first character in Fried Green Tomatoes was the cafe, and the town. I think a place can be as much a character in a novel as the people.

I think that people that are not sensitive, who seem to bang through life, do survive, but I don't think they get the really soaring feelings that people who are more artistically bent can get.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

I have a lot of friends that are ex-Miss Alabamas and ex-Miss Georgias.

In order to be Miss Anybody you had to have excellent grades, and I had terrible grades because of my dyslexia.

I believe in God, but I don't think you have to go crazy to prove it.

It was a stretch to imagine that Barbara Walters might want to give it all up for Ed Couch, but Evelyn tried her hardest. Of course, even though she was not religious, it was a comfort to know that the Bible backed her up in being a doormat.

It’s funny, most people can be around someone and then gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened

Marriage. Isn't it great? Each time you fall back in love with your [spouse] it gets better and better.

You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.

The food in the South is as important as food anywhere because it defines a person's culture.

I just know there's an albino living in the colored quarters. I can feel it in my bones.

That's what I'm living on now, honey, dreams, dreams of what I used to do.

Albert and I would spend hours and hours looking at them. Cleo had this big magnifying glass on his desk, and we'd find centipedes and grasshoppers and beetles and potato bugs, ants . . . and put them in a jar and look at them. They have the sweetest little faces and the cutest expressions. After we'd looked at them all we wanted to, we'd put them in the yard and let them go on about their business.

Daddy gave me real useful information to protect me in the real world. If anyone hits me, I'm not to hit them back. I wait until their back is turned, then hit them in the head with a brick.

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean . . .

You never know what's in a person's heart until they're tested, do you?

The ones that hurt the most always say the least.

It's funny, most people can be around someone and they gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened; but Ruth knew the very second it happened to her. When Idgie had grinned at her and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with all her heart.

You're just a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode. That's what you are, a bee charmer.

In her opinion, Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence Birdseye are the two greatest Americans that ever lived excluding Robert E. Lee. She believes we never lost the War Between the States, that General Lee thought General Grant was the butler and just naturally handed him his sword.

I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.

Face it girls. I'm older and I have more insurance.