Quotes from Tayari Jones

Celestial, I dated this other girl, also born and

FOR NORMAL PEOPLE, TALKING ABOUT THE LOST WOULD PUT OUT THE FIRE, BUT FOR ME IT WAS LIKE KEROSENE, GASOLINE AND A BLAST OF PURE OXYGEN

When I saw you, I was looking into your face, but I didn't really see you. I don't have the right words to explain.

I fully believed that I would leave the courtroom with my husband beside me. Secure in our home, we would tell people how no black man is really safe in America.

If you need a kid to keep you together, then how together are you?

After a year, I was ready to get this show on the road, creating a new generation with an updated set of rules and regulations

You don't know what you need until somebody gives it to you exactly the way you need it gave.

medium. I'm into the museum-quality marbles and the delicate line drawings, but the dolls were something that an ordinary person could get behind. My

If you have a woman, you recognize when you have said the wrong thing. Somehow she rearranges the ions in the air and you can't breathe as well.

Even a dog can make a bunch of puppies, but a real man raises his kids.

But who listens to the wisdom of jewelry? Only our bodies know the truth. Bones don't lie.

The chilly rationale of hindsight is what exposes the how and why of something that once seemed supernatural

But a man who is 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.

Tell her I asked after her." Celestial isn't the kind of singer you would want at your wedding. While her mother is a gravity-defying soprano, she is a scotch-and-Marlboros alto.

Ronalda looked at me as though she couldn't imagine an unspecial mother-daughter outing. It was like I had told her that I had money, but not the kind you could spend.

There is no fair fight to be waged about the past.

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 didn't tell Celestial about the voices in my head. I'm sure she had a choir of her own.

Prison is a haunted house of mirrors. It was impossible for me to come to the truth there.

It's funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.

It's hard to mark time when your heart is a pinball in your chest.

The tree is untouched by whatever worries we humans fret over. I think about how it was here before I was born and it will be here after we're all gone. Maybe this should make me sad, but it doesn't.

You can laugh," she said with angry eyes. "You know how I feel when I'm here? Black and desperate. You don't know what it's like to be standing in the line to get in to see him.

But for real, I want to tell you what you mean to me, but it's like trying to count the seconds of a day on your fingers and toes.