Quotes from Tayari Jones

Only an Atlanta girl could be so classy while doing something so hood. It was love-logic,

Our past is never past & there is no such thing as moving on...

I'm bringing this up because I knew that things like this happen to people, but by people , I didn't mean us.

Your father has promised to sponsor your education," she said. "That's the best he can do. Bigamy is expensive.

In response, he gave an almost imperceptible shoulder shrug that said, White folk gonna white folk.

But I recognized them by the ambition that clung to their skins like spicy cologne, the slight breeze of power that stirred the air, and finally, a mourning that left my mouth tasting of ash.

What she had with my father was a sort of creeping love, the kind that sinks in before you know it and makes a family of you. She says that love like what she has with my father occurs on the God level, not of the world and not bound by the laws of the state of Georgia.

The main thing was that I didn't want to feel the way I was feeling.

Daddy said, "At some point you will come to accept your limitations." "Do you accept yours?" I asked, with challenge in my voice. "But of course, Ladybug. That's what marriage teaches you.

Maybe that's what it means to be in love, to willingly be at the mercy of another person.

Love is supposed to be convenient. It's supposed to be easy. Don't they say that in First Corinthians?" He held me close against him again. "It's real. It's convenient. It's perfect

make plus model plus race equaled drug dealer,

I never want to feel grateful about being deceived.

I had a weight pressing on my soul and I dolled my way out from under it.

Five thousand dollars for a baby doll?" Olive fanned herself with the magazine, lifting her peach-preserve hair. "I guess that's why God invented white folks.

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

You would have been crazy for my ex-husband," Gwen told her once, as Willie Mae pulled the straightening comb, sizzling with grease. "Is he still available?" Mother chuckled and took a drag from her cigarette, catching the smoke with a damp towel. "He was available the whole time I was married to him.

Accident of birth is the number one predictor of happiness.' Once

Don't make your daughter feel like she got to lay with who you want her to lay with, like you're some kind of pimp.

Son," my father said, gripping the dessert spoon like a pitchfork. "I have one thing to say to you, as a black man: Roy is a hostage of the state. He is a victim of America. The least you could do is unhand his wife when he gets back.

But home isn't where you land; home is where you launch. You can't pick your home any more than you can choose your family.

Kodak commercials say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but the one they showed of Rodney ain't worth more than three or four. Boy. Black.

yellow frock with puffed sleeves and an empire waist had seemed elegant on the pattern envelope. She didn't care much for the finished product, but having spent too much time tracing the pattern and reinforcing buttonholes, she couldn't just throw it away because of a puckered neckline and an unflattering cut.

Before me in the foyer stood a Christmas tree, pine-scented and littered with shiny silver balls. Already, dozens of glittery gifts rested upon a red cloth trimmed in white, like Santa Claus. And like a child, I worried that there wasn't a present there for me; then like an adult, I worried that I shouldn't have come by empty-handed.