Quotes from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, "What's your business?" In Macon they ask, "Where do you go to church?" In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is "What would you like to drink?”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“By morning she was dead. She had not died of starvation or committed suicide by any conventional means. She had simply willed herself to die, and being a strong-willed woman, she had succeeded. She had missed dying on her birthday by two days.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Someone once wrote that musicians are touched on the shoulder by God, and I think it's true. You can make other people happy with music, but you can make yourself happy too. Because of my music, I have never known loneliness and never been depressed.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“She was a marvel. She did exactly as she pleased all her life, God bless her.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“But I never think about dead people. Looking at these old graves makes me think how generation after generation of the same family are all gathered together. And that makes me think about how life goes on, but not about dying. I never think about dying.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“For me, Savannah's resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Never spend any of your hard-earned money on clothes and accessories. You need to get yourself a mayyin to buy all that for you.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Black magic never stops. What goes from you comes to you. Once you start this shit, you gotta keep it up. Just like the utility bill. Just like the grocery store. Or they kill you. You got to keep it up. Two, five, ten, twenty years.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“The South is one big drag show, honey [...].”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“If there’s a single trait common to all Savannahians, it’s their love of money and their unwillingness to spend it.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Sometimes I just can't face going through with breakfast.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“We have a saying: If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, ‘What’s your business?’ In Macon they ask, ‘Where do you go to church?’ In Augusta they ask your grandmother’s maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is ‘What would you like to drink?”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“There being no direct route to Savannah from Charleston, I followed a zigzagging course that took me through the tidal flatlands of the South Carolina low country. As I approached Savannah, the road narrowed to a two-lane blacktop shaded by tall trees. There was an occasional produce stand by the side of the road and a few cottages set into the foliage, but nothing resembling urban sprawl. The voice on the radio informed me that I had entered a zone called the Coastal Empire.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“[Quoting Miss Harty:]

"People come here from all over the country and fall in love with Savannah. Then they move here and pretty soon they’re telling us how much more lively and prosperous Savannah could be if we only knew what we had and how to take advantage of it. I call these people ‘Gucci carpetbaggers.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“because it’s my job. It’s how I make my living. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else: It’s damn hard work bein’ a girl full”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Jim Williams’s guilt or innocence is no longer the issue,” he said. “Spencer Lawton’s incompetence is the issue.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“more drink. That’s when things happen. That’s when you find out everything you want to know.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“the doorbell rang again, and there was Mrs. Onassis and her friend Maurice”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“If you did not like the show, honey, my name is Nancy Reagan and go fuck yourself.” Chablis”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Whitney had carefully kept the cotton gin under wraps while he applied for a patent, but he made a tactical error when he allowed women to have a look at it,”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Don’t you feel cut off?” I asked. “Cut off from what?” she replied. “No, on the whole I’d say we rather enjoy our separateness.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“How do you do that?” I asked. “What do witches eat?” “Witches loves pork meat,” she said. “They loves rice and potatoes. They loves black-eyed peas and cornbread. Lima beans, too, and collard greens and cabbage, all cooked in pork fat. Witches is old folks, most of them. They don’t care none for low-cal. You pile that food on a paper plate, stick a plastic fork in it, and set it down by the side of a tree. And that feeds the witches.” The”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms. It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone. Time”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“Dr. Irving Stone of the Institute for Forensic Sciences in Dallas. He’s the guy who analyzed the clothing worn by President Kennedy and Governor Connally for the congressional committee that reexamined the Kennedy assassination.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“saying, I originally left the door unlocked as a matter of convenience. But pretty soon I realized that whenever the doorbell did ring, it was someone I didn’t know. So the bell became a signal that a stranger was at the door. I’ve learned never to answer it myself when that happens, because it’s likely to be a deputy sheriff wanting to serve me with some kind of paper, and of course I don’t need to be home for that.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“According to the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, more than 8 percent of Savannah’s adults were “known alcoholics,”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“We’re not at all like the rest of Georgia. We have a saying: If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, ‘What’s your business?’ In Macon they ask, ‘Where do you go to church?’ In Augusta they ask your grandmother’s maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is ‘What would you like to drink?”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“lay loooo-yah! A-layyyy-loo yah!” He had abandoned his tenor and was singing in a wavering falsetto.”
― John Berendt, quote from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

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