Bailey White Quotes

“I'm tired of being set upon by crazed Christians one minute and unbridled libertines the next. Girls, I'm going camping.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind: And Other Dangers of Southern Living

“When Mama starts to move across a room, people pay attention. You can never be sure she's not going to grab you by the top of the head to steady herself. And she's pretty free with that walking stick, too.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“It was no mean trick doing the wiring with those mittens on. But I managed it and crawled out, batting spiders into the shadows. I could hear a thud as they hit the floor joists, then a scuttling sound, then, worst of all, the silence of spiders.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“We settled Mama into the wheelchair and loaded her down with both our pocketbooks and a vase of flowers I had picked to present to our host in hopes of softening the effects of any opinions Mama might vent during the evening.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“Her blood-curdling snoring, with its gargling and squawking and its terrifying pauses is like the sound the devil might make if he were alternately relishing and strangling on a pound of human flesh.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“When I got started again, I drove slower and felt smaller. I think it does us all good to get looked at like that now and then by a wild animal.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“Then she laughed out loud and hugged him tight with both arms. She smelled like pine trees and lichens and hot sand. How odd, thought Roger, that after all, this is what it took - not a flock of scarlet ibises or golden-crowned kinglets, but just the names of chicken, hovering in the air like the sulpher butterflies at the dump.”
― Bailey White, Quite a Year for Plums

“I have the sick fantasy that whatever I see at the movies is going to happen to me at home. My bladder capacity increased tenfold after I saw "The Shining" because I was sure that if I went into the bathroom late at night, there would be a dead woman in the bathtub.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“Everybody's a little crazy if you get to know them good enough.”
― Bailey White, Quite a Year for Plums

“It’s a terrible painting,” said Della, backing away from it with distaste.
“There’s definitely something wrong with the mayonnaise,” said Lucy. “It looks almost curdled, as if she added the oil too quickly.”
“I don’t know anything about mayonnaise,” said Della. “It’s just a terrible painting. I don’t blame Dr. Vanlandingham.”
“But I like the idea of it, said Roger. “A portrait of a sandwich.”
― Bailey White, Quite a Year for Plums