Fannie Flagg

People didn't call blacks names anymore, at least not to their faces. Italians weren't wops or dagos, and there were no more kikes, Japs, chinks, or spics in polite conversation. Everybody had a group to protest and stick up for them. But women were still being called names by men. Why? Where was our group? It's not fair.

After the boy at the supermarket had called her those names, Evelyn Couch had felt violated. Raped by words. Stripped of everything. She had always tried to keep this from happening to her, always been terrified of displeasing men, terrified of the names she would be called if she did. She had spent her life tiptoeing around them like something lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture. She had always suspected that if provoked, those names were always close to the surface, ready to lash out and destroy her.

...but oh, it would just break your heart to see some of them waiting for their visitors. They get their hair all done up on Saturday, and on Sunday morning they get themselves all dressed and ready, and after all that, nobody comes to see them. I feel so bad, but what can you do? Having children is no guarantee that you'll get visitors . . . No, it isn't.

The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.

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.

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.

Hazel always used to say There's not enough darkness in the entire universe to snuff out the light of just one little candle.

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

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 AdcockP.S. I'm not deaf.

Evelyn stared into the empty ice cream carton and wondered where the smiling girl in the school pictures had gone.

Our car would've burned up too, but Michael, who is only twelve, got in it and backed it away. I climbed in with him and noticed some of my school books in the car, so I took them out and threw them in the fire. I figured it would save me from doing a lot of homework, but unfortunately under the headline in the paper the next day that said HARPER'S MALT SHOP BURNS TO THE GROUND IN TRAGIC FIRE it also said that seen throwing her school books into the fire was little Daisy Fay Harper. Rat's foot! No wonder Hollywood stars hate reporters, and after all that some busybody do-gooder has already bought me a new set of books.

Hazel: Listen babe you have to search for your luck it's nice if it just falls in your lap but I look for my lucky pennies. ... Maggie: What do you do with all your pennies Hazel: I give them away. It's good to spread your luck around and it always comes back to you.

And her dumplings were so light they would float in the air and you'd have to catch 'em to eat 'em.

All those calm, adult discussions. When all she really wanted to do was scream for her momma, her sweet momma, the one person in the world who loved her better than anyone ever would or ever could.

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.

...nobody was ever really ready to turn off their mother's machine, no matter what they thought; to turn off the light of their childhood and walk away, just as if they were turning out a light and leaving a room.

I knew I wasn't the picture of health, but I didn't think I was headed for the last roundup.

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