SOUTHERN FRIED THURSDAY

"All I can say is that there's a sweetness here, a Southern sweetness, that makes sweet music. . . If I had to tell somebody who had never been to the South, who had never heard of soul music, what it was, I'd just have to tell him that it's music from the heart, from the pulse, from the innermost feeling. That's my soul; that's how I sing. And that's the South." - Al Green

The American South is a geographical entity, a historical fact, a place in the imagination, and the homeland for an array of Americans who consider thmeselves southerners. The region is often shrouded in romance and myth, but its realities are as intriguing, as intricate, as its legends. - Bill Ferris

"Within the South itself, no other form of cultural expression, not even music, is as distinctively characteristic of the region as the spreading of a feast of native food and drink before a gathering of kin and friends." - John Egerton, from "Southern Food, at Home, on the Road, in History."

"Southerners can't stand to eat alone. If we're going to cook a mess of greens we want to eat them with a mess of people." - Julia Reed

"The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South." - Roy Blount, Jr.