Quotes from Tayari Jones

But more women should be selfish," she said. "Or else the world will trample you.

What right did my father have to the details of my life? He squandered his chance to be the protective father. You can't come rushing to the rescue six months later. I wasn't a person to be saved only when it was a convenient time to swoop in.

I've likely rolled with punches when I should have hit back," she said. "But I rolled my way into a life I love.

living here, you don't know anything about white people. Where I'm from, everything is mixed. In Atlanta, at least out here where we stay at, everything is so black that y'all don't know what it feels like to be black.

Everything was almost the same with her, but 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.

I like my mimosas like I like my men...transparent.

Babies bring the love with them when they come.

As for me, I'm modern and traditional at the same time. I, too, believe in intimacy—who doesn't? But I also believe in commitment. Marriage is, as she says, "a peculiar institution." My parents' divorce made it clear what kinds of raw deals are brokered at the altar. But right now, in America, marriage is the closest thing to what I want.

Did we love so forcefully that night because we knew or because we didn't? Was there an alarm from the future, a furious bell without its clapper? Did this hopeless bell manage to generate a breeze, causing me to reach to the floor to find my slip and use it to cover myself? Did some subtle warning cause Roy to turn and pin me to my side with his heavy arm? In his sleep, he mumbled something but did not wake.

Some things were inevitable. You'd have to be a fool to think otherwise.

You can't tell your teacher that my name is James Witherspoon. Atlanta ain't nothing but a country town, and everyone knows everybody. Your other wife and your other girl is a secret?, I asked him. He put me down from his lap, so we could look each other in the face. No. You've got it the wrong way around. Dana you are the one that's a secret.

That's your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.

Get on your knees when you talk to the Lord. Do not call yourself praying by lying in the bed thinking. Thinking and praying are two different things, and for something this important, you need prayer.

My skin stayed the same while this difference snuck in through a pore and attached itself to whatever brittle part forms my center.

Dwayne is right: blood does call to blood. I was always waiting for hers to beckon to mine, but I never considered that it would be my blood that would call upon hers.

he says he can't see why I didn't "just" tell the truth. but the truth is denser than he can imagine, yet it's more delicate than my body; it's more complicated than any love that ever passed between the two of us.

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.

I indulged you since you were a little girl, so you think every day is supposed to be the weekend.

You only lie to people you love

Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn't possible. Maybe that's what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It's like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It's the same thing, but it's not the same at all.

I don't want to jeopardize what I have with her over a dream that may not even fit me anymore. She and I are enough to be a family. If you need a kid to keep you together, then how together are you?

White people say, "It beats digging a ditch"; black people say, "It beats picking cotton.

Six or twelve," he sometimes said when he was depressed, which wasn't all the time but often enough that I recognized a blue mood when it was settling in. "That's your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.

Yes means yes and no means no, but what is the meaning of silence?