Gods in Alabama Quotes

“God gave us crying so other folks could see when we needed help, and help us.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“I had been born and mostly raised in the South, so I ought to have been able to find a way to reach him. Southern girls are trained from birth up that the way to a man's heart is never through the front door. They may leave a basket of cookies there, and while he's busy picking them up, they're squirming in through a back window.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“The things that happen to me just make me more me.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“Hail to thee, Alabama, thou verdant trollop!”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“oh that's right, you never lie unless your mouth is open and words are coming out of it”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“Hail to thee Alabama, you verdant trollop.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“People sin, Lena. People in love sin a lot. God invented sex. He knows how it works”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“You picked a man who can read tax code and date a celibate for two years. That's some serious patience. I have zero doubt in my ability to wait you out. I have zero doubt that you're meant to be my girl.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“It was an all-black Baptist church in a decent blue-collar neighborhood. Everyone at that church was so familiar. It was like visiting home. Sure, I got odd looks the first time I showed up. I felt like my skin was glowing with an incandescent white otherness. I could feel the congregation peppering me with sideways glances. But I didn’t feel any malice in their gazes. Every person I met and spoke with was soon relaxed and chatting with me about the weather or their children or Jesus. I was just as easy with them.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“God gives us tears so other know when we need help." from the book Gods in Alabama”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“Later, sitting in American History 101, I realized why I felt so at home at the church. After the industrial revolution came the great migration, as black sharecroppers traveled up to Chicago for better-paying factory jobs and a shot at a new life. But they were all southerners. They formed their own communities, and the culture survived. The people at Mrs. Burroughs’s church spoke with long liquid vowels and blurred consonants, cooked everything in lard, moved with a languorous grace that implied it was 100 degrees outside. They could have been my relatives.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“You don’t ever let a man say ‘My way or nothing’ to you. Not even a good man. Not even my son. And you never say ‘My way or nothing’ to him. You don’t take your sweetheart’s love and use it on him. You can do that to your mama, but not your sweetheart.” I smiled at that.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“Burr had to know I understood what I had done. I knew you couldn’t kill only the pieces that needed killing, and leave the pretty parts whole.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“After breakfast I went back to bed, but for the longest time, I could not sleep. I stared at Clarice’s shams and prayed and prayed and prayed. I had been raised to believe that prayer could move mountains, if only you had faith the size of a mustard seed. “Mountains be damned,” I whispered to God.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“After breakfast I went back to bed, but for the longest time, I could not sleep. I stared at Clarice’s shams and prayed and prayed and prayed. I had been raised to believe that prayer could move mountains, if only you had faith the size of a mustard seed. “Mountains be damned,” I whispered to God. “I need a body moved.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“The truth was, I would rather be Lena, his killer, than Arlene, a girl so desperate-hungry she had wanted to be his victim.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“But the good guy knew the monster was there. He chose to drink. He chose to let it out. He liked it. And I doubt he quit liking it.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“THERE ARE GODS in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“It’s like Paul on the road to Damascus. Here’s this anal-retentive control freak who likes to run around and persecute Christians. So God knocks him down and blinds him and reams him out. So he stops persecuting Christians. But—go read him. He was still an anal-retentive control freak.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

“He changed his behavior, but I don’t believe people can change their essential natures.”
― Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama