Quotes from Tayari Jones

The key to life," he told me once, "is to avoid the highs and the lows. It's the peaks and valleys that mess you up.

the devil stays busy.

All this hardheaded independence isn't helping me or anyone else.

When a woman tells you she is having your baby, your first mind is to get the hell out. It's like if the house is on fire. You don't think to escape, you just do It's human nature because you now she is asking you for your whole life. And a man don't have but one life.

Somewhere it is written that your sins fall on your parents, mostly on your mother,

It matters that I didn't grow up with my father. It's kind of like having one leg that's a half inch shorter than the other. You can walk, but there will be a dip.

Well, somebody in your situation needs to look at life like a newborn baby. Pretend like you have never been in the world before and you're waiting for it to show you what's what. Keep your head in the right now.

You are the greatest gift of my life.

I kissed her finger near the base, where my ring once rested. "Georgia," I said, beginning a sentence I couldn't bear to complete. "I tried," she began. "Shhh . . . Just sleep, Georgia. Just sleep." But neither of us closed our eyes against the immeasurable dark of that silent night.

The one thing I don't miss is how we fought so much. I can't believe we wasted so much time fussing over nothing. I think about every time I hurt you.

Georgia peach

One of the hurdles of adulthood is when holidays become measuring sticks against which you always fall short.

When he hipped me to Go Tell It on the Mountain, he didn't say one word about Jimmy being a homosexual.

Celestial was mad, and it turned me on a little, like the click on the stove before the flame took.

After a few miles, the hearse led the small processional down a bumpy, unpaved road. The jostling unlocked something in Roy Senior, who said, "I love Olive in ways

You could marry somebody else." I hardly got the words out. "It's legal." "When I want somebody else, I'll find somebody else," Big Roy said. "But if all I want is a meal, then I'll cook.

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.

I needed her to say that it didn't make a difference, that I was myself, not my gnarled family tree.

It was hard being behind bars when I turned thirty-five, but would it have been so hard if somebody told me that the next year I would be a free man? Time can't always be measured with a watch or a calendar or even grains of sand.

I am not about to judge you. That's between you and Jesus.

Casa tua non è il posto dove atterri ; è quello da cui decolli . Non è possibile scegliersi una casa, come non lo è scegliersi una famiglia. Nel poker ti toccano cinque carte. Tre le puoi scambiare, ma due te le devi tenere: la famiglia e la terra in cui sei nato.

There is no weight like the burden of a body.

Women have that way of asking you more than what they want to know.

My missing tooth was part of my body that should have been with me forever. Teeth are bones at the end of the day. And everyone has a right to their own bones.