Waffle House Quotes

I was in Nashville, Tennessee last year. After the show I went to a Waffle House. I'm not proud of it, I was hungry. And I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book, right? Waitress walks over to me: 'Hey, whatcha readin' for?' Isn't that the weirdest fuckin' question you've ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading FOR? Well, goddamnit, ya stumped me! Why do I read? Well . . . hmmm...I dunno...I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don't end up being a fuckin' waffle waitress.

Lady and gentleman, when my parents left Korea with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the considerable wealth they had amassed in the shipping business, they had a dream. They had a dream that one day amid the snowy hilltops of western North Carolina, their son would lose his virginity to a cheerleader in the woman's bathroom of a Waffle House just off the interstate. My parents have sacrificed so much for this dream! And that is why we must journey on, despite all trials and tribulations! Not for me and least of all for the poor cheerleader in question, but for my parents and indeed for all immigrants who came to his great nation in what they themselves could never have: CHEERLEADER SEX.

I love the smell of Waffle House; it's the smell of freedom, being on the open road and knowing that ninety percent of the people eating around you are also on that road. Truck driver's, road-trippers, hangovers--those who don't live that monotonous life of society slavery.

Waffle House at four in the morning is a liminal space occupied by long-haul truckers, bleary-eyed shift workers, and teenagers so high they can smell God’s breath.

It took about three minutes for the unassuming Waffle House to become the new offices of the law firm of Amber, Amber, Amber, and Madison. They set up camp in a clump of booths in the corner opposite from us. A few of them gave me an "oh, good, you are still alive" nod, but for the most part, they had no interest in anyone else.

Don-Keun was a new man. The moment they arrived, he vanished for a second. We heard muffled ecstatic screaming coming from somewhere in the back of the Waffle House kitchen, then he reappeared, his face shining with the kind of radiance usually associated with religious epiphany.

To me, my idea of what's good is to drive here and go to Waffle House, get a couple of eggs and a waffle. When I see the first Waffle House, I know I'm in the South. That's good.

It didn’t pay to ask questions past one in the morning at Waffle House.

I really love the smell of Waffle House. It’s this perfect combination of butter, maple syrup, bacon, and maybe onions? Whatever it is, they should bottle it up and pour it into a scented marker, so I can draw hot manga characters who smell like WaHo.

Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business centre hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord.

My current option was a Waffle House full of cheerleaders and a guy dressed in Reynolds wrap.

If you’ve never had the chance to visit a Waffle House, simply imagine a gas station bathroom that serves waffles.

Mark was cleaner but he looked like exactly the type of guy who’d go to a Waffle House at three in the morning after shooting a haunted puppet.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

GO BACK TO DALLAS!” the man sitting somewhere behind us yelled again, and the hold Aiden still had on the back of my neck tightened imperceptibly. “Don’t bother, Van,” he demanded, pokerfaced. “I’m not going to say anything,” I said, even as I reached up with the hand furthest away from him and put it behind my head, extending my middle finger in hopes that the idiot yelling would see it. Those brown eyes blinked. “You just flipped him off, didn’t you?” Yeah, my mouth dropped open. “How do you know when I do that?” My tone was just as astonished as it should be. “I know everything.” He said it like he really believed it. I groaned and cast him a long look. “You really want to play this game?” “I play games for a living, Van.” I couldn’t stand him sometimes. My eyes crossed in annoyance. “When is my birthday?” He stared at me. “See?” “March third, Muffin.” What in the hell? “See?” he mocked me. Who was this man and where was the Aiden I knew? “How old am I?” I kept going hesitantly. “Twenty-six.” “How do you know this?” I asked him slowly. “I pay attention,” The Wall of Winnipeg stated. I was starting to think he was right. Then, as if to really seal the deal I didn’t know was resting between us, he said, “You like waffles, root beer, and Dr. Pepper. You only drink light beer. You put cinnamon in your coffee. You eat too much cheese. Your left knee always aches. You have three sisters I hope I never meet and one brother. You were born in El Paso. You’re obsessed with your work. You start picking at the corner of your eye when you feel uncomfortable or fool around with your glasses. You can’t see things up close, and you’re terrified of the dark.” He raised those thick eyebrows. “Anything else?” Yeah, I only managed to say one word. “No.” How did he know all this stuff? How? Unsure of how I was feeling, I coughed and started to reach up to mess with my glasses before I realized what I was doing and snuck my hand under my thigh, ignoring the knowing look on Aiden’s dumb face. “I know a lot about you too. Don’t think you’re cool or special.” “I know, Van.” His thumb massaged me again for all of about three seconds. “You know more about me than anyone else does.” A sudden memory of the night in my bed where he’d admitted his fear as a kid pecked at my brain, relaxing me, making me smile. “I really do, don’t I?” The expression on his face was like he was torn between being okay with the idea and being completely against it. Leaning in close to him again, I winked. “I’m taking your love of MILF porn to the grave with me, don’t worry.” He stared at me, unblinking, unflinching. And then: “I’ll cut the power at the house when you’re in the shower,” he said so evenly, so crisply, it took me a second to realize he was threatening me… And when it finally did hit me, I burst out laughing, smacking his inner thigh without thinking twice about it. “Who does that?” Aiden Graves, husband of mine, said it, “Me.” Then the words were out of my mouth before I could control them. “And you know what I’ll do? I’ll go sneak into bed with you, so ha.” What the hell had I just said? What in the ever-loving hell had I just said? “If you think I’m supposed to be scared…” He leaned forward so our faces were only a couple of inches away. The hand on my neck and the finger pads lining the back of my ear stayed where they were. “I’m not

Going to Waffle House for the waffles seems very weird to me. The hashbrowns are where it's at.

She was having a nervous breakdown in Waffle House.

didn’t pay to ask questions past one in the morning at Waffle House.

I know exactly what you need,” Mark said. — “Welcome to Waffle House,” the waitress said, coming over to their back corner booth and stopping short.

Not in a castle nor in a mansion but in a Waffle House shall we find our salvation!

I really love the smell of Waffle House. It’s this perfect combination of butter, maple syrup, bacon, and maybe onions? Whatever it is, they should bottle it up and pour it into a scented marker,

I need the emergency room,' she repeated. 'I need a doctor. need someone to check my eye. I need a surgeon.' 'I know exactly what you need,' Mark said. 'Welcome to Waffle House,' the waitress said

Can you please stop talking so I can go back to enjoying Daniel Craig’s outrageously good body?” “That’s so gay,” JP said. “I’m a girl,” said the Duke. “It’s not gay for me to be attracted to men. Now, if I said you had a hot body, that would be gay, because you’re built like a lady.” “Oh, burn,” I said. The Duke raised her eyes at me and said, “Although JP’s a freaking paragon of masculinity compared to you.” I had no response to that. “Keun is at work,” I said. “He gets paid double on Christmas Eve.” “Oh, right,” said JP. “I forgot that Waffle Houses are like Lindsay Lohan’s legs: always open.

What I can say is that I’ve always felt that each one of us—from the kings and princes of the realm to the guys who wash dishes at Waffle House and the gals who change beds in turnpike motels—contains the whole world.

She paused the movie and turned around to me. “Tobin, what is your idea of hell?” “That seems like a question that could be answered in the car!” “Because my idea of hell is spending eternity in a Waffle House full of cheerleaders.

Is the Waffle House universally awesome? It is indeed, marvelous, an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color, or degree of inebriation, is welcomed—its warm yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation, inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered all across the South to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment. It never closes, it is always faithful, always there for you.

For Nina and Nathaniel, it’s all about the end product—pouring it on pancakes and waffles. But to Caleb, the beauty is in the way you get there. The blood of a tree, a spout, and a bucket. Steam rising, the scent filling every corner of the house. There is nothing quite like it: knowing every breath you take is bound to be sweet.

forty euro is wasteful, especially as it can only be used once. That small dogs fare better in small houses. That potato waffles

Sometimes sexy women like to act stupid because it helps them get exactly what they want. Theresa Boudreaux was one of those types: a bodacious waffle-house waitress with a devilish streak. Unfortunately for a certain high-ranking elected leader, she had the wits to go to RadioShack and buy herself a nine-dollar phone-recording device. She then used it to tape her dirty phone calls with US Congressman Huey Hartley, a powerful, sanctimonious, married-for-thirty-years politician from the solidly red state of Mississippi.

A true superstar, [Shaquille] O'Neal is one of the most widely recognized athletes in the world, especially at waffle houses and all-you-can-eat buffets. Despite being born without the kind of body that would lend itself to being a dominant NBA center, Shaq's tireless work ethic has enabled him to become one of the game's all-time greats at the position. In his nearly fifteen years in the league he has almost managed to develop low post moves beyond backing over people, and he vows to one day make more than half of his free throws.

A hurricane delayed our meeting. First date force majeure. Online late one night we rescheduled – "Right now! As-is!" Sleep pants and t-shirts were good enough for Waffle House. Over coffee and pie we said the same sorts things we had sent as instant messages. To a person not a screen name. After she gave me the tour. Her cat's old collar on the rear-view mirror. A place where graffiti was allowed. The Slab by the river. Places where the young could be young. She stopped for cigarettes. The cashier had dirt on her face and ate an onion like an apple. We pretended not to notice. It only seemed polite.

Callie scrambled from under the covers, dashed around the bed, and flung herself into Luce's arms. "They kept telling me you were going to be okay, but in that lying, we're-also-completely-terrified-we're-just-not-going-to-explain-a-word-to-you kind of way. Do you even realize how thoroughly spooky that was? It was like you physically dropped off the face of the Earth-" Luce hugged her back tightly. As far as Callie knew, Luce had been gone only since the night before. "Okay, you two," Molly growled, pulling Luce away from Callie, "you can OMG your faces off later. I didn't lie in your bed in that cheap polyester wig all night enacting Luce-with-stomach-flue so you guys could blow our cover now." She rolled her eyes. "Amateurs." "Hold on. You did what?" Luce asked. "After you...disappeared," Callie said breathlessly, "we knew we could never explain it to your parents. I mean, I could barely fathom it after seeing it with my own eyes. When Gabbe fixed up the backyard, I told your parents you felt sick and had gone to bed, and Molly pretended to be you and-" "Lucky I found this in your closet." Molly twirled a short wavy black wig around one finger. "Halloween remnant?" "Wonder Woman." Luce winced, regretting her middle school Halloween costume, and not for the first time. "Well, it worked." It was strange to see Molly-who'd once sided with Lucifer-helping her. But even Molly, like Cam and Roland, didn't want to fall again. So here they were, a team, strange bedfellows. "You covered for me? I don't know what to say. Thank you." "Whatever." Molly jerked her head at Callie, anything to deflect Luce's gratitude. "She was the real silver-tongued devil. Thank her." She stuck one leg out the open window and turned to call back, "Think you guys can handle it from here? I have a Waffle House summit meeting to attend.

Because here's a thing I've come to understand of late: context really does affect flavor. A place, its atmosphere, the people within it, their mood (and ours) genuinely change the way things taste. A restaurant lasagna has to be twice as good as your mother's or that one you had on that trip to Italy -- for it to be remind you of it even a little. A rack fo smoked pork ribs will never taste as good on a ceramic plate atop a tablecloth as it does from within a Styrofoam box on the hood of your car, downwind a roadside smoker, I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.

The children around our house have a saying that everything is either true, not true, or one of Mother's delusions. Now, I don't know about the true things or the not-true things, because there seem to be so many of them, but I do know about Mother's delusions, and they're solid. They range from the conviction that the waffle iron, unless watched, is going to strangle the toaster, to the delusion that electricity pours out of an empty socket onto your head, and nothing is going to change any one of them. The very nicest thing about being a writer is that you can afford to indulge yourself endlessly with oddness, and nobody can really do anything about it, as long as you keep writing and kind of using it up, as it were. I am, this morning, endeavoring to persuade you to join me in my deluded world; it is a happy, irrational, rich world, full of fairies and ghosts and free electricity and dragons, and a world beyond all others fun to walk around in. All you have to do---and watch this carefully please--is keep writing. As long as you write it away regularly, nothing can really hurt you.

That evening I was so sad that I didn't know what to do. It was completely impossible to get to sleep. Dad must have understood, because he came up to my room long after he had said good night. He brought his guitar. I didn't say anything. Neither did Dad, who sat on the edge of the bed. But after a while, he cleared his throat and began to play. He played the Trille tune, just like when I was tiny. It's my very own song, and it was Dad who wrote it. When he finished, he said that he'd written a brand-new song for me, called "Sad Son, Sad Dad." "Do you want to hear it, Trille?" I gave a tiny nod. And as the wintry wind swirled around the house and everyone else slept, my dad played "Sad Son, Sad Dad." I almost couldn't see him because it was so dark. I just listened. And suddenly I realized what dads are for.

It was George the Mailman’s last day on the job after 35 years of carrying the mail through all kinds of weather to the same neighborhood. When he arrived at the first house on his route, he was greeted by the whole family who congratulated him and sent him on his way with a tidy gift envelope. At the second house, they presented him with a box of fine cigars. The folks at the third house handed him a selection of terrific fishing lures. At the fourth house, he was met at the door by a strikingly beautiful blonde woman in a revealing negligee. She took him by the hand, gently led him through the door, which she closed behind him, and took him up the stairs to the bedroom where she blew his mind with the most passionate love he had ever experienced. When he had enough, they went downstairs and she fixed him a giant breakfast: eggs, potatoes, ham, sausage, blueberry waffles, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. When he was truly satisfied, she poured him a cup of steaming coffee. As she was pouring, he noticed a dollar bill sticking out from under the cup’s bottom edge. "All this was just too wonderful for words," he said, "But what’s the dollar for?" "Well," she said, "Last night, I told my husband that today would be your last day, and that we should do something special for you. I asked him what to give you. He said, “Screw him. Give him a dollar.” The breakfast was my idea.

THIS IS MY ABC BOOK of people God loves. We’ll start with . . .           A: God loves Adorable people. God loves those who are Affable and Affectionate. God loves Ambulance drivers, Artists, Accordion players, Astronauts, Airplane pilots, and Acrobats. God loves African Americans, the Amish, Anglicans, and Animal husbandry workers. God loves Animal-rights Activists, Astrologers, Adulterers, Addicts, Atheists, and Abortionists.           B: God loves Babies. God loves Bible readers. God loves Baptists and Barbershop quartets . . . Boys and Boy Band members . . . Blondes, Brunettes, and old ladies with Blue hair. He loves the Bedraggled, the Beat up, and the Burnt out . . . the Bullied and the Bullies . . . people who are Brave, Busy, Bossy, Bitter, Boastful, Bored, and Boorish. God loves all the Blue men in the Blue Man Group.           C: God loves Crystal meth junkies,           D: Drag queens,           E: and Elvis impersonators.           F: God loves the Faithful and the Faithless, the Fearful and the Fearless. He loves people from Fiji, Finland, and France; people who Fight for Freedom, their Friends, and their right to party; and God loves people who sound like Fat Albert . . . “Hey, hey, hey!”           G: God loves Greedy Guatemalan Gynecologists.           H: God loves Homosexuals, and people who are Homophobic, and all the Homo sapiens in between.           I: God loves IRS auditors.           J: God loves late-night talk-show hosts named Jimmy (Fallon or Kimmel), people who eat Jim sausages (Dean or Slim), people who love Jams (hip-hop or strawberry), singers named Justin (Timberlake or Bieber), and people who aren’t ready for this Jelly (Beyoncé’s or grape).           K: God loves Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye Kardashian. (Please don’t tell him I said that.)           L: God loves people in Laos and people who are feeling Lousy. God loves people who are Ludicrous, and God loves Ludacris. God loves Ladies, and God loves Lady Gaga.           M: God loves Ministers, Missionaries, and Meter maids; people who are Malicious, Meticulous, Mischievous, and Mysterious; people who collect Marbles and people who have lost their Marbles . . . and Miley Cyrus.           N: God loves Ninjas, Nudists, and Nose pickers,           O: Obstetricians, Orthodontists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Overweight Obituary writers,           P: Pimps, Pornographers, and Pedophiles,           Q: the Queen of England, the members of the band Queen, and Queen Latifah.           R: God loves the people of Rwanda and the Rebels who committed genocide against them.           S: God loves Strippers in Stilettos working on the Strip in Sin City;           T: it’s not unusual that God loves Tom Jones.           U: God loves people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates; Ukrainians and Uruguayans, the Unemployed and Unemployment inspectors; blind baseball Umpires and shady Used-car salesmen. God loves Ushers, and God loves Usher.           V: God loves Vegetarians in Virginia Beach, Vegans in Vietnam, and people who eat lots of Vanilla bean ice cream in Las Vegas.           W: The great I AM loves will.i.am. He loves Waitresses who work at Waffle Houses, Weirdos who have gotten lots of Wet Willies, and Weight Watchers who hide Whatchamacallits in their Windbreakers.           X: God loves X-ray technicians.           Y: God loves You.           Z: God loves Zoologists who are preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. God . . . is for the rest of us. And we have the responsibility, the honor, of letting the world know that God is for them, and he’s inviting them into a life-changing relationship with him. So let ’em know.

Freedom, Alabama, wasn’t really the middle of nowhere. We had big fields and the woods, sure, and horses and cows, but if we drove half an hour to Auburn we had a mini-golf course, a mall, and both a Waffle House and a Red Lobster. We had a bowling alley and the water park, even if the water park had been closed last summer, and we had the second-largest zoo in Alabama. It wasn’t like we were Laura Ingalls Wilder or anything.

I think if what you’d do for your last day on Earth doesn’t look like a pretty normal day for you, you probably need to reexamine your life.” “I agree.” I guess a Buick in a Waffle House parking lot is as good a place as any to have your notion of a well-lived life cracked open wider than the Grand Canyon.

WAFFLE HOUSE Two words that spelled oasis across the Southland.

Scattered, Smothered. And Covered There are days when I feel just as confused as the hashbrowns at Waffle House.

Excitedly warn him of impending highway danger that you can barely see as a tiny speck on the horizon.

I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a Waffle House. It was in Tampa, Florida, in 1989. All I could think was Wow, I owe the IHOP an enormous apology. The moment you enter most Waffle Houses, you get the sense the staff stopped caring a long time ago or never did.

I was suffering with profound personality change, and if I had to go out onto the highway and stick out my thumb and secure a ride to a Waffle House in order to consume grits in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I would go to a Waffle House, leaving behind the unwanted back hair and the expanding belt lines and the godforsaken cheese grits to make of myself a person of the road, a person of the highway, a person of indeterminate location. You could get some grits at a Waffle House, and it wouldn’t cost you an arm and leg, because it was presumed at Waffle House that you were on your last nickel, that you had squandered opportunities, that all was illusion. A man still has to eat, however, and coarsely ground cornmeal was best. It needed nothing other than what it was, and if an inn with a bunch of nauseating pastels and some faux-Mexican decor could not provide you with true and authentic grits, then you might go elsewhere, as you did, eventually. ★

My truck still functioned, but would no doubt attract police like fat Southerners to a Waffle House.

But it didn't matter. Because all it proved was that my mother was sitting out there coatless somewhere, waiting to come home to me. Even as he stared at it, the remark "Your mother's dead" sitting unspoken, like something rotten in our path that neither one of us wanted to be the first to pick up. Even after the kind of day I had had, being taunted at school, and then threatened with incarceration. Even know that when I went home I would face a house full of ghosts, it didn't matter to me. Instead I felt a little stab of joy.

Even the hash brown section of the Waffle House menu reads like a serial killer-to-do list: "Smothered, covered,diced, and scattered.

my wife’s wishes.” ________ A light rain sprinkled the streets late the next morning as Rick crossed the traffic-laden street from the hotel. After settling into a Waffle House booth, he ordered pancakes and scrambled eggs and a

Aw, can't we have breakfast, at least?" Moth moaned as Daniel rushed them past Roscoe's House of Chicken N Waffles. Cassandra made a face. "I fine the combination dubious." "The waffles are substandard," Moth allowed, "but the chicken is delectable. They elevate each other." Cassandra would not be convinced. "I don't believe chicken and waffles can have viable offspring.

I’d asked her at almost midnight last night, after ravaging her, a sheet wrapped around her body as she dug in to takeout from Waffle House.

Waffle House, a staple of the American South, is essentially a greasy yellow coffin. It’s small. It’s boxy. Half the people inside are little more than animated corpses, stuffing their mouths full of hash browns and sausages and the requisite waffles, their bodies bloating and swelling, their hearts dying.

Blonde and lank-haired, she could be twenty-five or thirty-five. She has the indeterminate look of hill people everywhere: sallow skin and hard angles, though she is pretty in the way waitresses at the Waffle House can be pretty at four a.m.

Waffle House is not harnessing their true economic potential. Sure, they make and sell food, but why are they not also in the entertainment industry? They should sell tickets to the fights that happen at their venue, and I'm sure a town like Harrison would embrace the spectacle.

Winter’s immediate impulse was to deny that she had a crush, but it’d been long enough. She did. She loved that he collected pens and obsessed over milk even though he couldn’t drink it. She liked that he cried. He didn’t have them anymore, but she even liked his stupidly long bangs and the way he used to toss his head back to get them out of his eyes. She liked that he ordered waffles at pancake houses and that he cared about absolutely everything and everyone, sometimes more than he cared about himself. Admitting it felt good.

The waitress almost said something, changed her mind, and headed back to the grill. It didn't pay to ask questions past one in the morning at Waffle House.

By this point, I could zero in on true crime by Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification in five seconds flat. It wasn't long before I had Helter Skelter and was browsing the rest of the section, seeing if there was anything else that might be interesting. There was one book with the greasy plastic cover of a Waffle House place mat, the red font large and garish, that promised to be a tell-all from the daughter of a serial killer who'd been local to Central Florida in the 1980s.

There was one book with the greasy plastic cover of a Waffle House place mat, the red font large and garish, that promised to be a tell-all from the daughter of a serial killer who’d been local to Central Florida in the 1980s. I didn’t remember putting it on my bibliography for my section on familial relationships between author and subject, but it could be helpful.

When he was alive, Dean had cultivated basically nothing inside or outside the house, and the very sameness of the before/after visited an inarticulable pain on Tessa, the solution of which lay in the smothered hash browns and bottomless coffee mug at the truck-stop Waffle House off 301, the kind anonymity of its eternal, synthetic daylight, and Virgil’s twelve-book origin myth of the Roman Empire.

FEMA had a “Waffle House index” with which it determined how damaged a community was after a hurricane or tornado passed through it. The sooner the local Waffle House opens after a natural disaster, the quicker a local community would recover.

I promise,” he replied firmly, “nothing is quite like a Waffle House at two in the morning.

she was serving up pussy like Waffle House hash browns.

Baby Harper and I were having dinner together, as we had done every Saturday night for close to a year by then. We went into Shelby and sat in our usual booth at Bridges Barbecue Lodge. We each ordered a pulled pork sandwich, a side of coleslaw, fries with an extra order of barbecue sauce for dipping, peach cobbler (only available on Saturdays), and a bottle of Cheerwine, a cherry-flavored cola, bottled in nearby Salisbury, which my great-uncle said brought out the "fruit" in Bridges's sauce. Bridges Barbecue Lodge had two things going for it, which was more than I could say for the other dining options in town, Pizza Inn, Waffle House, Arby's, Roy Rogers, and Hardee's. In the mid-eighties the greater Boiling Springs-Shelby area attracted only the B-list fast-food chains. Bridges was in a league of its own. The first thing that made Bridges special was that, even by the standards of North Carolina barbecue, Bridges's sauce was extraordinarily vinegary, which meant it was extraordinarily good.

Oh, not too long,” Orion replied. “Do you folks want some breakfast while you wait? I’ve only got frozen waffles, but I’ve got a couple thousand of them, so there’s plenty to go around.” “I could go for some waffles!” exclaimed Murray, who always thought with his stomach. He hurried into the house excitedly. Erica caught him by the collar. “We’re not here for breakfast. We’re just here for the decryption.” “Oh,” Orion and Murray said at once. Both sounded equally sad about it.

ole Waffle House,

I didn’t realize you’d actually get that thing to work. Are you planning on growing a mullet as well? Are there any Waffle Houses between here and there? Maybe we can stop and get into a brawl, but only after you bounce a few child support payment checks first.