Top 150 Fannie Flagg Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “But you soon find out they don’t want to meet you, they want you to meet them.”

— Fannie Flagg

102. “See what I mean? She thinks she sees all kinds of things out in the yard. Last week it was flying turtles.” She walked over and picked up his dishes. “I’m not sure if it was that fall she took a while ago or just her age; she’s older than God.”

— Fannie Flagg

103. “Towanda the Magnanimous, Righter of Wrongs and Queen without Compare.”

— Fannie Flagg

104. “Her daughter had given her a puff of a marijuana cigarette once, but after all the hot pads on the counter started walking toward her, she got scared and never tried it again. So dope was out.”

— Fannie Flagg

105. “They also learned that the very best way to start a marriage was with a good laugh.”

— Fannie Flagg

106. “Marry a nearsighted man and you’ll never look old.”

— Fannie Flagg

107. “After Elner Shimfissle accidentally poked that wasps’ nest up in her fig tree, the last thing she remembered was thinking “Uh-oh.”

— Fannie Flagg

108. “My Aunt Bess is about sixty-five years old and has never been married. She told me that they may put “Miss” on her tombstone, but that she hasn’t missed a thing.”

— Fannie Flagg

109. “No, non era la morte a spaventarla. Era questa sua vita di ogni giorno, che cominciava a ricordarle troppo da vicino la grigia sala d’aspetto del reparto di terapia intensiva.”

— Fannie Flagg

110. “You save up all your energy for the big push – when you need it. And when you’re up there, concentrate. Remain calm and steady as she goes. Don’t look right, don’t look left, don’t let yourself get rattled, just stay the course, nice and easy all the way.”

— Fannie Flagg

111. “Jerry Falwell would be responsible for the raising of all illegitimate children who had no homes;.”

— Fannie Flagg

112. “Evelyn was forty-eight years old and she had gotten lost somewhere along the way.”

— Fannie Flagg

113. “All he was doing was just sitting around killing time, looking at the birds and waiting to die.”

— Fannie Flagg

114. “So in the long run, it didn’t matter at all if you had been good or not. The girls in high school who had “gone all the way” had not wound up living in back alleys in shame and disgrace, like she thought they would; they wound up happily or unhappily married, just like the rest of them. So all that struggle to stay pure, the fear of being touched, the fear of driving a boy mad with passion by any gesture, and the ultimate fear – getting pregnant – all that wasted energy was for nothing.”

— Fannie Flagg

115. “They say envy is a coal that comes hot and hissing straight from hell.”

— Fannie Flagg

116. “If good wishes had been ten-dollar bills, he would have left a rich man.”

— Fannie Flagg

117. “But that was Lenore: the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.”

— Fannie Flagg

118. “He had done it all, from barnstorming to crop dusting, and had even flown a Davis Waco with the Baby Ruth Flying Circus. It was an advertising blitz unlike anything the country had ever seen. Billy would fly over county and state fairs, racetracks, and crowded beaches in his red and white plane, dropping hundreds of tiny rice paper parachutes – each one bearing a small Baby Ruth candy bar – on the crowds below.”

— Fannie Flagg

119. “Just like two and two always add up to four, kindness and forgiveness is always right, hate and revenge is always wrong.”

— Fannie Flagg

120. “Let’s put it this way, Mrs. Threadgoode said kindly. She’s of this world, but not in it.”

— Fannie Flagg

121. “Your mother formed an incorrect opinion of you and, naturally, you agreed with her. Children always think their parents are right. But in this case, your mother was entirely wrong.”

— Fannie Flagg

122. “When we arrived in Wilmington, looking forward to a steak with all the trimmings, one snooty puffball says to us, “We don’t accept women in trousers,” to which Willy says, “Would you accept a boot in your behind?”

— Fannie Flagg

123. “The Joy of a Loving God.”

— Fannie Flagg

124. “The war was over, but it had taken its toll. More than 400,000 Americans had been killed and 1.7 million had been hurt in some way. And most people didn’t know about the 39 WASPs who had been killed or that 16 Army nurses had died by enemy fire, and 67 had been taken prisoner, including Nurse Dottie Frakes, who was held in a Japanese concentration camp for more than three years.”

— Fannie Flagg

125. “And as friends get closer, they start to tell each other everything.”

— Fannie Flagg

126. “They always wanted too much from her, something she could not give. She had told him over and over she would not marry him or ever live with him. But, typical of most men, they always believed she didn’t really mean what she said and would change her mind. She never did. Why did they always have to push her into a corner and get so upset? She didn’t want to live with anybody. She liked being alone. She hated anybody grabbing at her, trying to smother her.”

— Fannie Flagg

127. “Maggie was the only person she knew with genuine class. “Damn it to hell!” she yelled to the cats. “What ever happened to people behaving like ladies and gentlemen?” The cats had no clue, and got up and left the room. As she sat.”

— Fannie Flagg

128. “When someone old dies, it is even sadder. First you notice that the paper doesn’t come anymore, then gradually the lights are turned out, the gas turned off, the house gets locked up, and the yard is no longer kept up, then it goes on the market and new people come in and change everything. Elner.”

— Fannie Flagg

129. “At the reception, she had introduced a man to his own wife. Twice.”

— Fannie Flagg

130. “Upset? I’m just thinking about staging my own death is all.”

— Fannie Flagg

131. “Cook to a thick paste over slow flame. Cool. Cream sugars and vanilla with butter and shortening. Beat until light and fluffy. Blend in salt. Mix in cooled paste. Beat until fluffy. Blend. Should look like whipped cream.”

— Fannie Flagg

132. “Because, honey,” she said, “after you’ve been to the moon, where else is there to go?”

— Fannie Flagg

133. “Whenever Ida pointed celery at him, she meant business.”

— Fannie Flagg

134. “They always said, that once you’ve been to Milwaukee, you’re never the same.”

— Fannie Flagg

135. “No matter how many times Dena had tried to tell her, Sookie had never understood what a great gal she was on her own. She had been one of the funniest and best-liked girls on campus, but she had never quite believed it. Everybody seemed to love Sookie but Sookie. A.”

— Fannie Flagg

136. “This meant that the families of the girls who had been killed would be receiving no death benefits, and at the end of the war, the WASPs, unlike all other discharged veterans, would be left with no GI Bill, no medical, no nothing.”

— Fannie Flagg

137. “Clyde. This here’s Bonnie.”

— Fannie Flagg

138. “But while she had been busy raising her children, the world had left her behind.”

— Fannie Flagg

139. “She had no interest in love. Love had taken her in the back room and beaten her up pretty badly.”

— Fannie Flagg

140. “The problem was that Norvaleen had been in denial and also in McDonald’s, eating the cheeseburger special with fries. Evidently, the Diet Coke had not evened out the calories. What a shock.”

— Fannie Flagg

141. “His motto: “Screw the little people.” He had lied before, and he would lie again. Ethics were for suckers.”

— Fannie Flagg

142. “Well, they are trying to get rid of Christianity and once they do that, then you watch. Our taxes will go up and they’ll take all our guns away and the next thing you know, a communist or a socialist will get in the White House and then it will be all over.”

— Fannie Flagg

143. “First, it is imperative that you create a private Sacred Space and set up an altar with a photo of yourself as a child, a candle, or anything else that speaks to you. I have a picture of the Dalai Lama and Oprah Winfrey.”

— Fannie Flagg

144. “He had done it all, from barnstorming to crop dusting, and had even flown a Davis Waco with the Baby Ruth Flying Circus.”

— Fannie Flagg

145. “What can I tell you about the town? I suppose if you had driven through it back.”

— Fannie Flagg

146. “There before her was a plate of perfectly fried green tomatoes and fresh cream-white corn, six slices of bacon, with a bowl of baby lima beans on the side and four huge light and fluffy buttermilk biscuits.”

— Fannie Flagg

147. “As recent immigrants, they wanted their children to speak and read English well. Miss.”

— Fannie Flagg

148. “And you can’t be happy and in a rage at the same time.”

— Fannie Flagg

149. “Honey, that’s one thing you be sure and you get on right away, is your Medicaid, you don’t want to be caught without that.”

— Fannie Flagg

150. “When you’re a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you’re on the fast train to Memphis.”

— Fannie Flagg