The Preacher Quotes

″‘See,’ I said, ‘you don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old. I can’t hardly remember her. And I bet you don’t remember your mama much either. So we’re almost like orphans.‘”

“All of a sudden it was hard for me to talk. I loved the preacher so much. I loved him because he loved Winn-Dixie. I loved him because he was going to forgive Winn-Dixie for being afraid. But most of all, I loved him for putting his arms around Winn-Dixie like that, like he was already trying to keep him safe.”

“I think the preacher thinks about my mama all the time, too. He’s still in love with her...But he doesn’t tell me that. He won’t talk to me about her at all.”

″‘She loved you very much.’ ‘But she left me,’ I told him. ‘She left us,’ said the preacher softly...‘She packed her bags and left us, and she didn’t leave one thing behind.‘”

“Thank you most of all for friends. We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other.”

“My daddy is a good preacher and a nice man, but sometimes it’s hard for me to think about him as my daddy, because he spends so much time preaching or thinking about preaching or getting ready to preach. And so, in my mind, I think of him as ‘the preacher.‘”

“I could see that Winn-Dixie was having a good effect on the preacher. He was making him poke his head out of his shell.”

″‘Are you looking for a home?’ the preacher asked, real soft, to Winn-Dixie. Winn-Dixie wagged his tail. ‘Well,’ the preacher said. ‘I guess you’ve found one.‘”

“Some people have a strange way of going about making friends”

″‘When I told you your mama took everything with her, I forgot one thing, one very important thing she left behind.’ ‘What?’ I asked. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Thank God your mama left me you.‘”