Quotes from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fannie Flagg ·  416 pages

Rating: (230.8K votes)


“Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you are two steps ahead.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“The ones that hurt the most always say the least.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“Face it girls. I'm older and I have more insurance.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe



“Are you a politician or does lying just run in your family?”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“You never know what's in a person's heart until they're tested, do you?”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It sure did on me.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“I believe in God, but I don't think you have to go crazy to prove it.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“People cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe



“No matter what you look like, there's somebody who's gonna think you're the handsomest man in the world.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“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.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“You're just a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode. That's what you are, a bee charmer.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“That's what I'm living on now, honey, dreams, dreams of what I used to do.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“What was this power, this insidious threat, this invisible gun to her head that controlled her life . . . this terror of being called names?
She had stayed a virgin so she wouldn't be called a tramp or a slut; had married so she wouldn't be called an old maid; faked orgasms so she wouldn't be called frigid; had children so she wouldn't be called barren; had not been a feminist because she didn't want to be called queer and a man hater; never nagged or raised her voice so she wouldn't be called a bitch . . .
She had done all that and yet, still, this stranger had dragged her into the gutter with the names that men call women when they are angry.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe



“Oh it don't make no kind of sense. Big ol' ox like Grady won't sit next to a colored child. But he eats eggs- shoot right outta chicken's ass!”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“You know, a heart can be broken, but it still keeps a-beating just the same.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“Lately, it had been an endless procession of long, black nights and gray mornings, when her sense of failure swept over her like a five-hundred-pound wave; and she was scared. But it wasn't death that she feared. She had looked down into that black pit of death and had wanted to jump in, once too often. As a matter of fact, the thought began to appeal to her more and more.

She even knew how she would kill herself. It would be with a silver bullet. As round and as smooth as an ice-cold blue martini. She would place the gun in the freezer for a few hours before she did it, so it would feel frosty and cold against her head. She could almost feel the ice-cold bullet shooting through her hot, troubled brain, freezing the pain for good. The sound of the gun blast would be the last sound she would ever hear. And then... nothing. Maybe just the silent sound that a bird might hear, flying in the clean, cool air, high above the earth. The sweet, pure air of freedom.

No, it wasn't death she was afraid of. It was this life of hers that was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care waiting room.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“There are magnificent beings on this earth, son, that are walking around posing as humans.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“And so, as quietly as he had lived, he slipped out of town, leaving only a note behind:

Well, that's that. I'm off, and if you don't believe I'm leaving, just count the days I'm gone. When you hear the phone not ringing, it'll be me that's not calling. Goodbye, old girl, and good luck.

Yours truly,
Earl Adcock

P.S. I'm not deaf.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe



“I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean . . .”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“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.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“One gal drank a can of floor wax and topped it off with a cup of Clorox, trying to separate herself from the same world he was in.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“He had mourned each of those great trains as, one by one, they were pulled off the lines and left to rust in some yard, like old aristocrats, fading away; antique relics of times gone by.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“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.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe



“I brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in a swing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, to hang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked from the waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picture for fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, I don't think the old men they've got here can see well enough to notice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, so she's in the closet with my gallstones.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“It’s funny, when you’re a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you’re on the fast train to Memphis.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


“… but she never did cry. She was too hurt to cry.… You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.”
― Fannie Flagg, quote from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


About the author

Fannie Flagg
Born place: in Birmingham, Alabama, The United States
Born date September 21, 1944
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