Quotes from John Berendt

the doorbell rang again, and there was Mrs. Onassis and her friend Maurice

Loneliness is not being alone, It's loving others to no avail.

Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.

What do you read? I read what friends tell me is good. This explains the book's success, partially. It got very good reviews. Good reviews will get you a readership right away, but that's it. The review or the article appears one day in a magazine or a newspaper, then it's gone. Word of mouth is a continuing phenomenon, much more powerful.

If you did not like the show, honey, my name is Nancy Reagan and go fuck yourself." Chablis

Whitney had carefully kept the cotton gin under wraps while he applied for a patent, but he made a tactical error when he allowed women to have a look at it

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,' he wrote. 'Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

because it's my job. It's how I make my living. And I'll tell you somethin' else: It's damn hard work bein' a girl full

Dr. Irving Stone of the Institute for Forensic Sciences in Dallas. He's the guy who analyzed the clothing worn by President Kennedy and Governor Connally for the congressional committee that reexamined the Kennedy assassination.

The tides surged through the marsh and each wave that hit the beach came light-struck and broad-shouldered, with all the raw power the moon could bestow.

According to the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, more than 8 percent of Savannah's adults were "known alcoholics

We're not at all like the rest of Georgia. We have a saying: If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, 'What's your business?' In Macon they ask, 'Where do you go to church?' In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is 'What would you like to drink?

rum-drinking pirates, strong-willed women, courtly manners, eccentric behavior, gentle words, and lovely music.

lay loooo-yah! A-layyyy-loo yah!" He had abandoned his tenor and was singing in a wavering falsetto.

Chigarid. The man who

When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze and touches with her hand the summer trees….' That's poetry. And 'Like painted kites the days and nights went flying by. The world was new beneath a blue umbrella sky.

would presume nothing. I would take notes.

Wisteria and red-buds had followed, and then in mid-March the azaleas burst forth in gigantic pillows of white, red, and vermilion. White dogwood blossoms floated like clouds of confectioner's sugar above the azaleas. The scent of honeysuckle

Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink.

What was your name before that?" I asked. "Frank," she said.

You mustn't be taken in by the moonlight and magnolias. There's more to Savannah than that. Things can get very murky.

It ain't braggin' if y'really done it.

Walls of thick vegetation rose up on all sides and arched overhead in a lacy canopy that filtered the light to a soft shade. It had just rained; the air was hot and steamy. I felt enclosed in a semitropical terrarium, sealed off from a world that suddenly seemed a thousand miles away.

From the outset, he had assumed that his word as a gentleman would be accepted and that the whole affair would be settled quietly, the way Savannah had settled past incidents involving prominent suspects