Dixie Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Dixie. Here they are! All 100 of them:

There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
You can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
This song is dedicated to Frank Zappa, and River Phoenix, Fred Gwynne who played Herman Munster, Dixie Lee Ray, Thomas P, Tip O'Neil, and you, dumb ass, who just threw water on me.
Kurt Cobain
Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another. Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are not being met.
bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
It's hard not to immediately fall in love witha dog who has a good sense of humor.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Other people’s tragedies should not be the subject of idle conversation.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
They say God never gives us more than we can handle, but sometimes I think God has overestimated what I can take.
Blaize Clement (Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (A Dixie Hemingway Mystery, #1))
You can always trust a dog that likes peanut butter.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Do you think everybody misses somebody? Like I miss my mama?” “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. She closed her eyes. “I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Men and boys always want to go fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Are you going to pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?
Clint Eastwood
Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Perfume companies ought to bottle the smell of crisp bacon. Forget pheromones. I’ll bet a woman with a little spot of bacon grease behind her ears would attract every male within a five-mile radius.
Blaize Clement (Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (A Dixie Hemingway Mystery, #1))
How can you make a beautiful ending without making beautiful mistakes.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
When you touch a man's body, he will enjoy the moment, when you touch a man's heart he will remember it forever.
Dixie Waters
Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.
Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
Dear God, thank you for warm summer nights and candlelight and good food. But thank you most of all for friends. We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
I lay there and thought how life was like a Littmus Lozenge, how the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together and how hard it was to separate them out. It was confusing.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart." - Gloria Dump
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
When I say drop your pants and show me the moon, I'm not just whistling Dixie!
George W. Bush
If I could tell you about Red I would sing to you of fire Sweet like cherries Burning like cinnamon Smelling like a rose in the sun
Dixie Dawn Miller Goode (Rainbows Around Us)
Melancholy", I repeated. I liked the way it sounded, like there was music hidden somewhere inside it. Kate Di Camillo, Because of Winn Dixie
Kate DiCamillo
I read to escape reality, not to have reality intrude in my fairytales.
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
Sometimes he reminded me of a turtle hiding inside its shell, in there thinking about things and not ever sticking his head out into the world.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
On the freak-out scale, she was past the 'heebie-jeebies' and into 'pee yourself'.
Lexi George (Demon Hunting in Dixie (Demon Hunting, #1))
It's been my experience that people who treat others as inferiors are really only covering up their own lack of class.
Virginia Brown (Dixie Divas (Dixie Divas #1))
When you touch a man’s heart, he will remember it forever.
Dixie Waters
You can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
There is a fine line between wearing makeup and looking like Crayola gangbanged your face.
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
I will not keep calm. I will raise hell and break shit. -T-shirt
Lani Lynn Vale (Charge To My Line (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #6))
Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty. -Keys to a healthy relationship
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
Being young is easy, you know, but it takes guts to be old.
Blaize Clement (Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (A Dixie Hemingway Mystery, #1))
It’s throat punch Thursday, and I’m offering free tickets.
Lani Lynn Vale (Life To My Flight (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #5))
Bad Dixie! No more sex for you!
Abigail Roux (The Archer)
Did a cartwheel the other day. Found out it is most definitely not like riding a bike.
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
holding a tiny dixie cup in my hand makes me feel like a giant human being that can crush things
Brandon Scott Gorrell
I once spent an entire summer in Georgia with relatives who drank decaf. Worst summer of my life. Without caffeine, I didn't have the personality God gave a houseplant.
Sean Dietrich (Sean of the South: Whistling Dixie)
Yeah, don’t worry, Winter. We’re gonna free you from that husband and bury him in the back field. It’ll be like that Dixie Chicks song. Rob is the new Earl.
Elsie Silver (Reckless (Chestnut Springs, #4))
Do you really think that if Jesus came back, he'd be hanging out with Ted fuckinging Cruz? Ted Cruz's wife doesn't hang out with Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is a skin-walker and a demon from the nether region.
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)
He smiled at me. He did that thing again, where he pulled back his lips and showed me his teeth. He smiled so big it made him sneeze. It was like he was saying, I know i'm a mess. Isn't it funny?
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
She asked me to say something sexy to her, so I whispered, “I’m a fireman.
Lani Lynn Vale (Halligan to My Axe (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #2))
Treat your woman like a princess, and fuck her like a whore.
Lani Lynn Vale (Life To My Flight (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #5))
There ain’t no way you can hold on to something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Throw me to the wolves, and I’ll return leading the whole goddamned pack. -Fact of Life Aaron
Lani Lynn Vale (Beard Mode (The Dixie Warden Rejects MC #1))
Yes, ma'am. He figured the world was a sorry affair and that it had enough ugly things in it and what he was going to do was concentrate on putting something sweet in it.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
My people always tol' me, 'You can stay in Hell a little while, long as you know you're gettin' out.
Lisa Patton (Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter (Dixie, #1))
Don’t make me mad and tell me to calm down. That’s like placing food in front of a starving man and expecting him not to eat it. Fuck you.
Lani Lynn Vale (Halligan to My Axe (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #2))
Often when we read, especially when we are younger, we are looking for a mirror, echoes of our voices, people who might look and sound like us.... Write for the twelve-year-old girl, who is looking at a mirror, at a window. ~Edwidge Danticat
Donna Everhart (The Education of Dixie Dupree)
Sometimes, it seemed like everybody in the world was lonely. I thought about my mama. Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where i felt like she should be.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
I can tell by the way you park your car that I hate you. -Female logic
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
You flipped the bitch switch, so buckle up and enjoy the ride, asshole!
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
I loved the land that surrounded me but hated the history that haunted that land.
Mark Kemp (Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South)
despair all ye mortals,” he said in a voice of doom. “the mama approacheth
Lexi George (Demon Hunting in Dixie (Demon Hunting, #1))
Never use anybody else's power, but always use yours.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
Spending time, here in Eufaula, has helped me realize that barreling through life at a breakneck pace -- while exciting, sometimes glamorous, and always loads of fun -- has been, at best, a distraction. A useful tool in avoiding personal introspection or thoughts of the future.
Laura McNeill
When you touch a man’s body, he will enjoy the moment; when you touch a man’s heart, he will remember it forever.
Dixie Waters
When you draw a line in the sand, be careful it is not low tide.
Dixie Waters
Looks like today’s got shit storm written all over it.
Lani Lynn Vale (Kevlar To My Vest (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #3))
If everyone who’s worth a damn just leaves as soon as possible, then what’s left?
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)
There is nothing worse than war in the summetime.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
I loved the preacher so much. I loved him because he loved Winn-Dixie. I loved him because he was going to forgive Winn-Dixie for being afraid. But most of all, I loved him for putting his arm around Winn-Dixie like that, like he was already trying to keep him safe.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
I told him, 'You can start in the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the right, and then you can go back to the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the left. You can just kiss my big ass.
Blaize Clement (Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (A Dixie Hemingway Mystery, #1))
I believe every man who stood up was either killed or wounded," said Lieutenant Oliver Williams, who was himself hit. This regiment had participated in a touching event, well remembered by both armies. At Fredericksburg in late 1862, after the Sharpsburg campaign, it had held a dress parade at which the band played "Dixie." Across the Rappahannock a Northern band heard and played back the song as a bit of camaraderie. The band of the 20th North Carolina responded by playing "Yankee Doodle." Then both bands, as if by prearrangement, joined in "Home, Sweet Home." This chorus ran along the lines and both armies sang and wept.
Michael Shaara (The Killer Angels (The Civil War Trilogy, #2))
The bond of sisterly love is much tighter than the bond which binds men.
Dixie Waters
When things are bad, be thankful...they are not as bad as they could be.
Dixie Waters
It’s better to lose a lover than to love a loser, asshole, bastard, lying, son of a cock whore.
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
You can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they're doing now.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
Love, after all, beats Death. Every time.
Dixie Lyle (Marked Fur Murder: A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Mystery)
Heads of warring nations could learn a lot about how to achieve lasting peace by watching dogs and cats who live in the same house.
Blaize Clement (Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (A Dixie Hemingway Mystery, #5))
I think incompatibility of temper began when it was made plain to us that we get all the opprobrium of slavery while they, with their tariff, get the money there is in it.
Mary Boykin Chesnut (Mary Chesnut: A Diary From Dixie)
Cute enough to stop your heart, skilled enough to restart it
Lani Lynn Vale (Lights To My Siren (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #1))
You call that caring?! I call it a line of crap! The only thing you cared about begins with an “F” and ends with me losing my virginity!
Maggie Adams (Whistlin' Dixie (Tempered Steel, #1))
If he puts his hand on your head to keep you from bumping it when he helps you in the car. -You might be a police wife
Lani Lynn Vale (Kevlar To My Vest (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC, #3))
Christians are the salt of the earth...Nothing grows where they've been.
Donald Hays (The Dixie Association: A Novel (Voices of the South))
Sometimes, it seemed like everybody in the world was lonely.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
I don’t have a sense of humor anymore. It’s literally just sarcasm and a general hate of the majority of the human population. -Fact of Life
Lani Lynn Vale (For the Love of Beard (The Dixie Warden Rejects MC #7))
I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
That was my go-to emotion lately. When I wanted to scream, I stayed silent. When I wanted to cry, hit something or complain, I stayed silent.
Lani Lynn Vale (The Beard Made Me Do It (The Dixie Wardens Rejects MC #5))
Babcock knew no Southerners personally but he had seen them in court often enough...and Ed's manner and appearance said Dixie to him. He imagined Ed at home with his family, a big one, from old geezers to toddlers. He saw them eating their yams and pralines and playing their fiddles and dancing their jigs and guffawing over coarse jokes and beating one another to death with agricultural implements.
Charles Portis (Masters of Atlantis)
You know, my eyes ain’t too good at all. I can’t see nothing but the general shape of things, so I got to rely on my heart. Why don’t you go on and tell me everything about yourself, so as I can see you with my heart.
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
We've the whole wide world out there waiting for us, and we've forever to make the most've it. And that's the thing: enjoyin' life. Not livin' death, or anything stupid like that. What've we got to fear except the sun?
Garth Ennis (Preacher, Volume 5: Dixie Fried)
Sometimes the hardest pieces of a puzzle to assemble, are the ones missing from the box.
Dixie Waters
Life has thrown you a curveball, baby. But it don't mean you need to throw all you know out the winda' neither. The Lawd is gonna give you another chance at love but you must be smart about it.
Lisa Patton (Yankee Doodle Dixie (Dixie, #2))
Jesse: But—but are you okay? Tulip: Yeah, fine. I checked out the bad guy's place and shot them up a little bit, you know. There were quite a lot of them, and one guy nearly got me with a throwing knife— But I know you'll be cool with that, because you can trust me to handle myself. Let's go.
Garth Ennis (Preacher, Volume 5: Dixie Fried)
It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play. I find this a little exasperating, but I'm a lot more experienced now, and understand that probably less than 2 percent of the public can really hear. When I say hear, I mean follow a horn player through his ideas, and be able to understand those ideas in relation to the changes, if the changes are completely modern. Dixie is different - it's easier to follow, and rock is even simpler than Dixie, except for the music of a few really fine rock musicians (or variations thereof)...
Chet Baker (As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir)
Oxford was as drenched in Dixie as we were, just about as Southern a town as you would ever hope to find, which generally was a good thing, because that meant that the weather was nice, except when it was hot enough to fry pork chops on the pavement, and the food was delicious, though it would thicken the walls of your arteries and kill you deader than Stonewall Jackson, and the people were big hearted and friendly, though it was not the hardest place in the world to get murdered for having bad manners. Even our main crop could kill you.
Timothy B. Tyson (Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story)
I made my bed and I sleep like a baby with no regrets and I don't mind saying it's a sad, sad story when a mother will teach her daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger. And how in the world can the words that I said send somebody so over the edge that they'd write me a letter saying that I better shut up and sing or my life will be over?
Dixie Chicks (Playlist -- The Very Best of Dixie Chicks: Piano/Vocal/Chords)
Of Dixie Doyle it is said that she could convince grown men of anything. While she is only a mediocre student and a wholly untalented tennis player, she possesses a quality of performed girlishness that turns sex into a ragged paradox for men beyond the age of thirty. She speaks with the hint of a babyish lisp, the pink end of her tongue frequently peeking out from between her teeth, but her eyes are implacable fields of gray that at any moment could conceal everything you imagine - or nothing at all. She might be an X-ray registering the skeleton of your soul, or, like Oscar Wilde's women, she might be a sphinx without a secret.
Joshua Gaylord (Hummingbirds)
Captain Copeland picked up the intercom mike and addressed the Roberts’s crew. That he was speaking for himself struck Ens. Jack Moore as unusual and urgent. Normally seaman Jack Roberts was the public address voice of his namesake warship. His southern drawl was all but unintelligible to anyone not acquainted with Dixie’s rhythms and diphthongs. But the skipper’s diction was as crisp as a litigator’s. He was talking fast and sounding more than a little nervous. “A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.
James D. Hornfischer (The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour)
My name’s Gloria Dump,” she said. “Ain’t that a terrible last name? Dump?” “My last name is Buloni,” I said. “Sometimes the kids at school back home in Watley called me ‘Lunch Meat.’” “Hah!” Gloria Dump laughed. “What about this dog? What you call him?” “Winn-Dixie,” I said. Winn-Dixie thumped his tail on the ground. He tried smiling, but it was hard with his mouth all full of peanut butter. “Winn-Dixie?” Gloria Dump said. “You mean like the grocery store?” “Yes ma’am,” I said. “Whooooeee,” she said. “That takes the strange-name prize, don’t it?” “Yes ma’am,” I said. “I was just fixing to make myself a peanut-butter sandwich,” she said. “You
Kate DiCamillo (Because of Winn-Dixie)
These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith: Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be punished. I haven’t faced rejection this brutal since I was single. He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower. If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful. Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little. As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud. She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt. Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. “You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!” He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq. She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare! If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD I haven’t felt this alive since I lost my virginity. He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay. Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal. Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends? Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad. The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans. Silence filled the room like tear gas. The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time. Happiness is the best cosmetic, He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait. Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang, Men cannot fall in love with women they don’t find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect. During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading. Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over. His father warned him to never do anything he couldn’t justify on Oprah. The poor are not free -- they’re just not enslaved. Only those with money are free. Sperm wasn’t something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus. The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo. Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus. When Bush talks to God, it’s prayer; when God talks to Bush, it’s policy. Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor – apparently she wished for world peace. Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, ‘Ain’t Got Dick.’ Bush fought a war on poverty – and the poor lost. Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply. Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris. America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won. Bush hasn’t choked this much since his last pretzel. Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious. So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks. If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded. It’s hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither. In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay. Bush believes it’s not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bush’s help, soon. In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America they’re called Republicans. With great power comes great responsibility – unless you’re Republican.
Brent Reilly
Jesus! We can't just sit here and twiddle our thumbs. Who's the brains of this outfit, anyway?" "I think that was Shaw," Carl said wryly as his mind landed on an idea. "Before he went mad' that is. Now I suppose it's you, God help us. " "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Shawn asked in a hurt voice. "I've not gone mad!" "Uh huh. What's the plan, Dixie?" Carl asked as he spared Shawn a glance before turning his gaze back on Remy. Remy blinked at him. "You can't put him in charge," Shawn protested. "We'll be in the shit and he'll stop to get an ice cream, for fuck's sake!" "What's wrong with ice cream?" Remy asked in an insulted voice. "I think you missed the point of the comment," Thiago muttered as he sat down in the kitchen besid Nikolaus.
Abigail Roux (The Archer)
My pet-sitting day ends around sunset, and it's very satisfying to know that I've made several living beings happy that day. That I left their food bowls sparkling clean and fresh water in their water bowls. That I brushed them so their coats shined, and played with them until all our hearts were beating faster. That I kissed them goodbye and left them with their tails wagging or flipping or at least raised in a happy kind of way. That's a heck of a lot more than any president, pope, prime minister, or potentate can say, and I wouldn't switch places with any of them.
Blaize Clement (Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof (A Dixie Hemingway Mystery, #4))
It doesn't happen to me anymore, because a fresh generation of Africans and Asians has arisen to take over the business, but in my early years in Washington, D.C., I would often find myself in the back of a big beat-up old cab driven by an African-American veteran. I became used to the formalities of the mise-en-scène: on some hot and drowsy Dixie-like afternoon I would flag down a flaking Chevy. Behind the wheel, leaning wa-aay back and relaxed, often with a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth (and, I am not making this up, but sometimes also with a genuine porkpie hat on the back of his head) would be a grizzled man with the waist of his pants somewhere up around his armpits. I would state my desired destination. In accordance with ancient cabdriver custom, he would say nothing inresponse but simply engage the stickshift on his steering wheel and begin to cruise in a leisurely fashion. There would be a pause. Then: 'You from England?' I would always try to say something along the lines of 'Well, I'm in no position to deny it.' This occasionally got me a grin; in any case, I always knew what was coming next. 'I was there once.' 'Were you in the service?' 'I sure was.' 'Did you get to Normandy?' 'Yes, sir.' But it wasn't Normandy or combat about which they wanted to reminisce. (With real combat veterans, by the way, it almost never is.) It was England itself. 'Man did it know how to rain… and the warm beer. Nice people, though. Real nice.' I would never forget to say, as I got out and deliberately didn't overtip (that seeming a cheap thing to do), how much this effort on their part was remembered and appreciated.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
One also, in our milieu, simply didn't meet enough Americans to form an opinion. And when one did—this was in the days of crew-cuts and short-legged pants—they, too, often really did sport crew-cuts and trousers that mysteriously ended several inches short of the instep. Why was that? It obviously wasn't poverty. A colleague of my father's had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came from a place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone… ) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. There was a boy at my boarding school called Warren Powers Laird Myers, the son of an officer stationed at one of the many U.S. Air Force bases in Cambridgeshire. Trousers at The Leys School were uniform and regulation, but he still managed to show a bit of shin and to buzz-cut his hair. 'I am not a Yankee,' he informed me (he was from Norfolk, Virginia). 'I am a CON-federate.' From what I was then gleaning of the news from Dixie, this was unpromising. In our ranks we also had Jamie Auchincloss, a sprig of the Kennedy-Bouvier family that was then occupying the White House. His trousers managed to avoid covering his ankles also, though the fact that he shared a parent with Jackie Kennedy meant that anything he did was accepted as fashionable by definition. The pants of a man I'll call Mr. 'Miller,' a visiting American master who skillfully introduced me to J.D. Salinger, were also falling short of their mark. Mr. Miller's great teacher-feature was that he saw sexual imagery absolutely everywhere and was slightly too fond of pointing it out [...]. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned much earlier, the dominant images projected from the United States were of the attack-dog-and-firehose kind, with swag-bellied cops lying about themselves and the political succession changed as much by bullets as by ballots.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis The Call of the Wild by Jack London The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Giver by Lois Lowry Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling Hatchet by Gary Paulsen The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Holes by Louis Sachar The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins I Am LeBron James by Grace Norwich I Am Stephen Curry by Jon Fishman Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson LeBron’s Dream Team: How Five Friends Made History by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger The Lightning Thief  (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton The River by Gary Paulsen The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (written by many authors) Star Wars series (written by many authors) The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann D. Wyss Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renée Russell Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Andrew Clements (The Losers Club)
When the NSSF fights against legislation designed to prevent mass shootings because it “won’t work and is a violation of rights,” we understand that many people agree with that argument. But that’s not, at all, even a little bit why the organization lobbies so hard. It works hand in hand with the NRA and certain senators, and spends millions of dollars per year for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. And every time a shooting happens, it makes even more money. Yes. For real. When a mass shooting makes national headlines, the gun lobby purposefully stokes up fear and paranoia over proposed new gun laws so that scared citizens get out their checkbooks and buy a new AR-15 (or sporting rifle). So why would the NSSF have any interest in stopping mass shootings? Why would it engage politically and invest in compromise, a reform plan that attempts to make all Americans safer, or any sort of reckoning of the role guns play in gun violence? It won’t. However you feel about guns and their place in America—whether we’re talking about rifles for hunting or assault rifles, or anything in between—it’s undeniable that the gun lobby has refused to acknowledge or entertain any sort of regulation or reform aimed at making us a safer and saner nation. The reason why: because that does not make it more money. A customer base kept terrified at all times that this will be “the last chance before the government bans” whatever gun manufacturers are peddling is much more valuable. A customer base absolutely convinced that the just-about-anyone-can-buy culture we have is politically necessary without seeing that it serves those companies is what they’re after. They have achieved it.
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)