Quotes from Tayari Jones

His denomination, he says, is Empiricism. If you can't count it, measure it, or gauge wit with science, it didn't happen.

like that one time when Celestial happened upon a receipt for two pieces of lingerie, not just for the one I gave her for her birthday.

Bunny arrived in the mornings and left in the evenings after the supper dishes were washed

explained that convenience, habit, comfort, obligation—these are all things that wear the same clothing as love sometimes.

When a man wails like that you know it's all the tears that he was never allowed to shed, from Little League disappointment to teenage heartbreak, all the way to whatever injured his spirit just last year. As Roy howled, my fingers kept worrying a rough patch of skin beneath my chin, a souvenir of scar tissue. When

As we made our way to the grave, I marveled at how a town so small had accumulated so many dead.

And even if what you said in the article is true, about how you "want to raise consciousness about mass incarceration"—let's say this wasn't bullshit—please explain to me what a baby doll is going to do to help anybody in here.

A paper clip could best the catch, but when a woman shuts you out, picking the lock won't let you back in.

Be careful when you leave Atlanta, because you'll end up in Georgia.

Neither of us would ever enjoy the perfect peace of nothing. After the clock by the bed flashed midnight and Christmas was over, I felt my wife nibbling kisses across my shoulders. I smelled unhappiness on her breath, but she continued caressing me, saying my name in a mournful whisper.

I shook my head. Roy wasn't that type of man, although he had dignity in spades. But for a person like Roy, letting go wasn't a self-respecting option.

Nobody around here thought you did it. It was just the wrong race and the wrong time.

Every relationship requires that you go through some shit.

night followed day, as it always does, and each night promised a day soon to come. this is something I took comfort in these last bad years.

I moved closer to her and wound my fingers in her thick hair. "We've always been together," she told me. "Not like this. But always." I nodded. "I want to be the only one you cook for." We laughed, a real laugh, a shared laugh. This is when our life changed. We came to each other with joy on our lips. What came next may not have been legally binding; there was no clergyman or witness. But it was ours.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who leave home, and those who don't.

nothing is ever over.

I could see from the little turn-up at the corner of her eyes that she was so proud that she could have been her own mother,

Roy, I know that we had a choice, but really, we didn't have a choice. I mourned as though I had miscarried. My body apparently was fertile soil, but my life was not. You may feel that you're carrying a burden, but I shoulder a load as well. So now you know. We are bearing two different crosses.

Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start a life just as it can start a day. This was the meeting of two people who were destined to love from before they were born, from before they made choices that would complicate their lives. This love just rolled toward my mother as though she were standing at the

Spontaneity and playing it by ear is fine for those who can afford it, but a boy from Eloe had to have a strategy

a man who is a father to a daughter is different from one who is a father to a son. One is the left shoe and the other is the right. They are the same but not interchangeable.

but when a woman shuts you out, picking the lock won't let you back in.

While her mother was a gravity-defying soprano, she is a scotch-and-Marlboros alto. Even when she was a little girl, her voice was like the middle of the night.