Quotes from Tayari Jones

Women's work is never easy, never clean.

Yes," she said, but she seemed confused. "I never thought you did it. I know who I married." "Georgia," I said. "I know who I married, too. You're in me. When I touch you, your flesh communicates with my bones. You think I can't feel how sad you are?" "I'm scared," she said, her fingers transmitting a miserable willingness. "It's hard to start over.

The vast generosity of women is a mysterious tunnel, and nobody knows where it leads. The writing on the walls spells out trick questions, and as a man, you must know that you cannot reason your way out.

What happens to you doesn't belong to you, only half concerns you. It's not yours. Not yours only.

your best quality is also your worst. For herself, she identified her ability to adapt. "I've likely rolled with punches when I should have hit back,

You don't know how demoralizing it is to be a man with nothing to offer a woman.

There are too many loose ends in the world in need of knots. You can't attend to all of them, but you have to try.

Something shadowy and female happened between them, as mysterious and primal as witches' brew.

With my eyes on my wife, I would tell the waitress that I liked my coffee like I liked my women, "black and sweet." This always got me a smile. Then Celestial would say, "I like my mimosa like I like my men: transparent.

I know who I married, too. You're in me. When I touch you, your flesh communicates with my bones.

The truth is a strange thing. Like pornography, you know it when you see it.

But 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.

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 is gone, nothing is whole again.

He used to say, 'Accident of birth is the number one predictor of happiness.

It occurs to me that maybe a man can love his son only as much as he loves the mother.

In the private library of my spirit, there is a dictionary of words that aren't.

she went about her business in a way that put me in mind of an old matchbook. You can scratch the head against the strip in the same way you always have but you are not going to get any kind of spark.

She pulled away and walked to my bedroom and closed herself in with a little click of the knob. 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.

The chilly rationale of hindsight is what exposes the how and why of something that once seemed supernatural. It's the magician's manual that shows you how the tricks are done, not with sorcery but with careful cues and mysterious devices.

But how you feel love and understand love are two different things. Now, so many years down the road, I recognize that I was alone and adrift and that he was lonely in the way that only a ladies' man can be. He reminded me of Atlanta, and I reminded him of the same. All these were reasons why we were drawn to each other, but standing with him outside of Maroons, we were past reason. Human emotion is beyond comprehension, smooth and uninterrupted, like an orb made of blown glass.

The bitter scratch of his unshaven good-night kiss will always, for me, be the sensation of grief.

Although Hermione is right about a great many things, she was wrong about the nature of things gone by. this is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. but there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.

But how you feel love and how you understand love are two different things

I hate using that word, career. It always feels like the word bitch is hiding out between the letters.