QUOTES FROM THE LATE, GREAT LEWIS GRIZZARD

Death

"I don't have any out-of-body experiences. I had indeed seen a bright, beautiful light and had followed it, but it turned out to be a Kmart tire sale."

Food

"If you eat something, but no one else sees you eat it, it has no calories."

"If you fatten up everyone else around you, then you look thinner."

"Cookie pieces contain no calories. The process of breaking the cookie causes calorie leakage."

"Never order barbeque in a place that also serves quiche."

"Giving Northerners unbuttered instant grits is an old remedy for getting rid of tourists."

"There are two things man should never see made : laws and Vienna Sausages." (from a performance at the Jacksonville Civic Center, Jacksonville, FL, 1988)

"My favorite meal is country fried steak smothered in sawmill gravy, creamed potatoes, butter beans, squash, spring onions, thinly sliced tomatoes, and unsweetened ice tea."

"The idiot who invented instant grits also thought of frozen fried chicken, and they ought to lock him up before he tries to freeze-dry collards."

(on salad bars) "If I want to go to the trouble of preparing my own salad, I will do it in the privacy of my own home, where I can eat it in my underdrawers if I so desire."

"I would rather sit next to somebody who smells like a moose than somebody who slurps his soup."

"There is something wrong when you wait in line thirty minutes to get a hamburger that was cooked for ninety seconds an hour ago."

Health

"I am convinced Ginger Ale can heal the sick and raise the dead. "

"Nobody ever knew exactly how much Cordie Mae weighed, but her daddy used to say, 'If I could get $1.25 a pound for that child, I could pay off my truck.'"

Kids

"A kid knocked over my beer with a frisbee at the beach once. I threatened him with a lawsuit and then put this curse on him : 'May your voice never change and your zits win prizes at county fairs.' I hate it when somebody knocks over my beer at the beach."

Misc.

"Why do service stations lock the bathroom door but leave the cash register unlocked?"

Lewis’ advice to Atlantans in case of nuclear war: "If you live on the South side of Atlanta, get on I-75 and go south. If you live of the North side of Atlanta get on I-75 and go north. If you are a Yankee get on 285." (Note to all you Yankees -- I-285 is a continuous loop around the city)

Politics

"Nobody." (When asked on Larry King Live in 1991 who would be the best Democratic presidential candidate.)

Religion

"God talks like we do." (In reference to Southern accents)

Sex, Women, and Kathy Sue

"If brains were all that important in a beauty contest, you could enter wearing a Hefty Bag."

"Give me a beauty queen who understands the rules of the game. Give me a beauty queen like Kathy Sue Loudermilk, who won the coveted Miss Collard Festival Queen title seven years running back home, breaking Cordie Mae Poovy's string of four in a row. That's not the only string Kathy Sue broke. When the one that held up the top of her swimsuit snapped, that's how she ousted Cordie Mae in the first place."

"For years, I thought drive-in theaters were for watching movies out-of-doors. Then I went to one with Kathy Sue Loudermilk, bless her heart. She was a lovely child and a legend before her sixteenth birthday. She was twenty-one, however, before she knew an automobile had a front seat."

"Kinky sex involves the use of duck feathers. Perverted sex involves the whole duck."

"I get letters from people who say, 'What have you got against women?' What could I possibly have against women? I've married three of them."

"I don't think I'll get married again. Every five years or so, I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house."

"Women who drink white wine either want to get married, sell you a piece of real estate, or redecorate your house. Either way, it's expensive."

Style

"I had a black Naugahyde couch I always put in the living room, despite the fact that some liberal got up a drive to do away with Naugahyde couches because of the number of little Naugas they had to hit in the head with lead pipes to make even one Naugahyde ottoman."

Southernisms

"In the south there's a difference between 'Naked' and 'Nekkid.' 'Naked' means you don't have any clothes on. Nekkid' means you don't have any clothes on ... and you're up to somethin!"

"A dawg is a Southern man's best friend."

"You can't perfume a hog."

"I'm a white man and I'm a Southerner. And I'm sick of being told what is wrong with me from outside critics, and I'm tired of being stereotyped as a refugee from 'God's Little Acre'."

"Most non-Southerners think men named Bubba are nothing more than ignorant swine who wear caps with the names of heavy-equipment dealers on the front, shoot anything that moves, listen to music about doing bodily harm to hippies, and put beer on their grits."

Sports

"If soccer was an American soft drink, it would be Diet Pepsi."

"You know why they call it golf, don't you? Because all the good four-letter words were already taken."

"ESPN uses 'in your face' to promote its sports coverage. 'In your face' is just another way of saying, 'Up yours.'" (in reference to showboating athletes and bad sportsmanship)

"Dorsey Hill thinks when you die you go to Vince Dooley's house. He can't wait." (Vince Dooley is the AD of UGA.)

"What's always been wrong with golf is, any way you slice it, golf is a dull game. The players are dull, robots carrying sticks. They don't even spit or scratch their privates like other athletes. The spectators are dull. They applaud even when some guntz hits a good shot. The television announcers are dull, too. If Dave Marr cracks you up, you probably think Bernard Kalb is a riot."

Y2K/Computers

Lewis may not have been alive to see a Y2K meltdown, but he would have appreciated it. He wrote this in Elvis is Dead...

"Computers can even talk to each other now, so what's to keep them from plotting against us? And here is something else to worry about: What if all the computers on earth went down at one time? Life as we know it would come to a standstill all over the planet. The only people who know would how to carry on would be native who live in the African bush who have never heard of computers, and me, who has steadfastly refused to learn to operate one. Frankly, I'm sort of looking forward to that day. I could dress up in a loin cloth with my friends from the bush, and we could dance up and down and I could laugh and say 'I told you so,' and poke all those uppity computer-types in their butts with my spear."