Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil Quotes
"We don’t do black-on-white in Savannah," Joe Odom told me. "Especially black male on white female. A lot may have changed here in the last twenty years, but not that."
"I understood all that, but I still wondered about certain small details concerning my jogging companions."
"He always wore a suit and tie, a starched white shirt, and a fedora."
"The old man walked through the cast-iron gates of the grandiose Armstrong House at the north end of Forsyth Park."
"But I noticed that he and the people he spoke with—usually well-dressed businessmen—played a very odd game."
"The men would ask him, ‘Still walking the dog?’ It was perfectly clear that the old man was not walking a dog, but he would respond by saying, ‘Oh, yes. Still walking the dog.’"
"I’m a porter, but everybody knows me as a singer."
"I directed a chorus of five hundred voices for Franklin D. Roosevelt when he visited Savannah on November 18, 1933."
"Keep a whisk broom in your pocket, and brush him off! He don’t need no brushing off, but he don’t know it!"
"‘Don’t ever ask a man, ‘How is Mrs. Brown?’ You ask him, ‘How is Miss Julia? Tell her I ask about her.’"
"‘I keep busy,’ Mr. Glover said. ‘I don’t sit down and hold my hand.’"
"I didn’t know nothing about no German, French, or Italian, but by me hearing the lady sing so much, I learned to say the words whether I knew what they was or not."
"People were aghast. There had apparently been some kind of shooting in the poor man’s family not long before, which made it positively ghoulish."
"Jimmy Biddle was president of the National Trust at the time."
"Because of Lee, we all moved downtown when it was still slummy and not very safe."
"He was an idealist and a purist. He was saving downtown."
"He wanted a public confrontation right away."
"That’s Lee, the one-man show. If he can’t run it, he doesn’t want any part of it."
"Savannah Landmark is nothing but an ego trip."
"He’s creating a new black ghetto. It’s not true integration."
"The paint is peeling, the porch railings are broken."
"What’s so damned awful about gentrification?"
"In the name of preservation, Lee Adler has stopped preservation cold."
"Lee Adler did not quit Historic Savannah! He was thrown out."
"He must do something brilliant, something absolutely ingenious."
"Lee Adler emerged from his crisis with a black-power base."
"It makes it impolitic for any city official to oppose Lee in any of his little housing ventures."
"Savannahians liked to talk about Charleston most of all, especially in the presence of a newcomer."
"Savannahians were well aware of past killings in which well-connected suspects were never charged, no matter how obvious their guilt."
"It says James A. Williams shot Danny Lewis Hansford, twenty-one."
"The whole board voted against it, including Lee."
"But when the time came to sell it there weren’t any takers."
"Public housing is needed, I’ll grant you, but the Victorian district is about the worst place for it."
"He has not only made a comeback as a historic preservationist, he has wrapped himself in a morally unassailable issue: housing for poor blacks."
"If you oppose him, you’ll look like a racist."
"He has regained his position as one of America’s leading preservationists, and in the process he has rubbed our noses in the issue of race."
"The blacks know that the Adlers are doing something for them, whatever their motives may be."
"I’d be much obliged if you’d hold on to it until the first of the month."
"If this is a misdemeanor, may I never see the victim of a felony."
"Spencer Lawton’s as much on trial here as Williams."
"I believe I know when that bastard got shot."
"If I had not shot Danny, it would have been my obituary that was published."
"Money is ammunition, and as long as I have some I'll use it."
"Butter only the piece of bread you are about to put in your mouth."
"I wouldn’t say we’ve reached absolute parity with the Cotillion yet."
"Remember when the black athletes at the Mexico City Olympics won a lot of medals and raised their fists in the black-power salute?"
"I'm the only person in the world who's ever bought Fabergé from a jail cell."
"I hypnotize myself so that, in my own mind at least, I am not here."
"We women feel the matter of debutantes should be our prerogative."
"If we gave it up, we’d lose our status. We can’t do that."
"The first thought that ran through Driggers’s head was that he had never had that kind of effect on a woman before."
"I couldn’t poison it if I wanted to. Now, if there were an aboveground reservoir, I could dump poison in it very easily. But there isn’t."
"The sheriff can wait. I’ll be back on Monday."
"The only way you gonna move up is if you quit playin’ with Mr. Jim!"
"I has influence! I knows the dead. I will call on them and tell them to lift you up."
"He’s just laughin’ up a storm at me, that’s what he’s doin’."
"Witches loves pork meat. They loves rice and potatoes."
"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 spirits is on our side. They will watch over us."
"Pitiful, ain’t it? Now I know why he haven’t let go. He ain’t happy here."
"He’s the one that’s causin’ all the trouble."
"Savannah had only one motive: to preserve a way of life it believed to be under siege from all sides."
"Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms. It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone."
"The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived."