Quotes from Tayari Jones

you can never know another person's mind; this is one thing that I've learned.

there should be a word for this, the way it feels to steal something that's already yours.

On the radio Smokey Robinson complained that "a taste of honey is worse than none at all.

This is not an excuse, just an explanation.

she was like a different person, deeper and broader, like she perceived something about life and death and love that I have the luxury of not knowing yet.

What's up, Roy?" "Well . . ." He looked up at the sun, not bothering to shield his eyes. "I got locked up for a crime I didn't commit, and when I get home, my wife has hooked up with my boy.

sometime that only thing that can cure a man is the inside of the woman, the right woman who does things the right way.

But in truth, I was different now, burning and anointed.

Sometimes I envy the children today with all their tae kwon do, psychotherapy, and language immersion, but at the same time, I appreciate that back then being little meant you really didn't have to do anything but stay alive and have fun.

love is supposed to be convenient. its supposed to be easy.

she is country, too. But let her tell it, she's a "southern woman,

Sometimes I feel guilty as hell for just being able to live my life." I didn't have to tell him that I understood, because he knew that I did. There should be a word for this, the way it feels to steal something that's already yours.

Love is a maze.Once you get in it, you're pretty much trapped.

Dear Celestial, I am innocent.' 'Dear Roy, I am innocent, too.

Our house isn't simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it's gone, nothing is whole again.

The vast generosity of women is a mysterious tunnel, and nobody knows where it leads.

I was at the BP station, filling up my daddy's Chrysler with gas, when I finally heard what I think was my mama's voice in my ear. Any fool can up and go. Whenever she started saying what "any fool" could do, she followed up with how a "real man" would handle the problem

She also wondered why she wasn't able to care more about the important things happening in the world. There was the Vietnam War. She knew boys who had died, and there was always Dr. King, cold in the ground. Even though Willie Mae hadn't been bitten by a dog, she had been in Birmingham when the German shepherds were let loose. And where had Mother been when all of this was going on? She was busy learning to be a wife.

but in my marriage to Roy, I felt blessed in the old-fashioned sense, in the way that anyone would be in finding someone whose smell you enjoyed.

I wanted to live in a house with walls painted in various shades of blue and green, instead of the eggshell hue that screamed renter.

because everybody knows the way to make a bad matter worse with a southern woman is to refuse her food. So I ate like a refugee

Another favorite of hers was talking about what dogs were capable of. As in, "Even a dog can make a bunch of puppies, but a real man raises his kids." She made dozens of those observations. She aimed them at me constantly and I did my best to be the real man she had in mind. But she never told me anything about saying good-bye, because as far as she was concerned, real men didn't have any need for farewells because real men stay.

But this is what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn't simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it's gone, nothing is whole again.

Roy raised my hand to his lips. "Sometimes when you like where you end up, you don't care how you got there.