For me, a year of recorded interviews equals an always-near-the-limit Dropbox and a steady stream of transcriptions from my favorite service, Temi. Along the way, some quotes just stand out. Here are a few of the memorable ones from 2019.

“Purses ain’t the problem.” — Miss G., witness to a crime at City Park

“It has been clearly identified that the No. 1 influencer in a woman’s decision about her pregnancy is the father of the baby. If we’re really looking at the big pro-life picture, men have to be a part of the decision process.” — Bethany Garth, executive director at First Choice Women’s Medical Center in Montgomery, Alabama

“The biggest take away is the sacrifice that 1 percent of the United States population makes in order to provide for the other 99 percent.” — Army veteran Landon Beasley at Wesson Attendance Center’s Veterans Day assembly

“It was completely filled with kids. Many of them had been there for months because there was nowhere to put them. And that was really a defining moment in my life. I couldn’t unsee what I had seen.” — Gulf Coast pastor Tony Karnes recalling how a tour of the Harrison County children’s shelter led to Mississippi’s Rescue 100 foster care initiative 

“Country ingenuity.” — Dump’s BBQ owner Ken Sullivan describing their homemade “traditional, open” barbecue pit

“Got a camera facing me, filming me. If it triggers something, an accident or something, it’s going to film what I’m doing, and it’s going to film what happened in front of us. It’s Big Brother riding with us.” — truck driver Kenny Woodiel on new industry regulations

“She said, ‘Val, that’s the story God gave you to share. So don’t ever feel badly that it’s the same story over and over again.’” — Valerie Elliot Shepard, daughter of missionaries Jim and Elisabeth Elliot, when she told her mother she was concerned about being repetitive

“There were 30 people here when it opened.” — Bude resident after waiting four hours to renew his license at Brookhaven’s driver’s license station

“The problem with a society based on rights and not on morality and do unto others is that one person’s rights will always trample on, or at the very least step on, another person’s rights. This was the problem in 1861. This is the problem now.” — Pam Grillis, after making revisions to her book, “Vicksburg and Warren County: A History of People and Place”

“The heart of parenting seems to be changing. I fear for our situation with some of the drug problems. We have some parents who love their children, but the drugs have taken over. They are not the same people. It’s a crisis in our nation.” — Joyce Wilson, Dickerson Place Campus director (Baptist Children’s Village)

“It has a system. It has a routine. It has relationships and family and community — stuff that the Christian West is jettisoning in favor of exalting the individual. There are consequences.” — Matt Chancey of Sudan’s Persecution Project, describing why secularism and atheism are no match for the Islamist tide

“The war was just over, and they were trying to send as quickly as possible 100 missionaries to Japan. It was a blessing for me to be there.” — WWII Navy veteran and Southern Baptist missionary Ralph Calcote, during a Red Shirts gathering weeks before his death

“This is something that Americans in Maine or Americans in Minnesota or Nebraska could identify with and the picture was so dramatic, it went worldwide, and that brought pressure on the U.S. government. Why is America allowing this?” — Tougaloo Chaplain Ed King, describing the photo and scene he witnessed at Jackson’s Woolworth’s sit-in in 1963

“You’re not going to take a picture, are you?” — customer who missed school to stand in line for Zaxby’s grand opening and Zaxby’s Pack of 52 Dealz

“We had an 11-year-old who was taken from the bus stop. She told her pimp, ‘Kill me. Just get it over with. I’m not going to cooperate. I’m not going to do this.’ He said, ‘I know your younger sister. I know where she goes to school. We’re going to get her. We’re going to season her and we’re going to make her do twice as much as you, and you’re going to watch.’ And at that she just said, ‘I’ll do anything you tell me to do.’” — Susie Harvill, director of Advocates for Freedom, a group fighting human trafficking in Mississippi

Wesson resident Kim Henderson is a freelance writer. Contact her at kimhenderson319@gmail.com.