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I had been to the South many times and I thought I knew what the South was, but not until you live with people and live through their lives do you know what it's really about.

I think we Southerners have talked a fair amount of malarkey about the mystique of being Southern.

I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country.

You know, I'm from the South, and I wasn't interested in perpetuating a stereotypical southern character.

If you care to define the South as a poor, rural region with lousy race relations, that South survives only in geographical shreds and patches and most Southerners don't live there any more.

Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history, but Southern identity now has more to do with food, accents, manners, music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races, a variety of ethnic groups and people who move here.

Southerners are also like ethnic groups in that they have a sense of group identity.

In the South, it is different, they have a audience that is literate.

There's no such thing as being too Southern.

I think things like food, the food of the south is sort of the common tie that binds us all, Black and White, the sense memories. It's a very particular part of the country.