Quotes from Tayari Jones

Someone always pays. Bullet don't have nobody's name on it, that's what people say. I think the same is true for vengeance. Maybe even for love. It's out there, random and deadly, like a tornado.

In my marriage, I never determined which of us was rootstock and which the grafted branch.

I find out the man is my Biological and he's standing there with his dick in his hand.

He stood again and cried, not like a baby, but in a way only a grown man can cry, from the bottom of his feet up through his torso and finally through his mouth. When a man wails like that you know it's all the tears that he was never allowed to shed, from Little League disappointment to teenage heartbreak, all the way to whatever injured his spirit just last year.

For children, Thanksgiving is about turkey and Christmas is about presents. Grown up, you learn that all holidays are about family, and few can win there.

emptied. 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's gone, nothing is whole again.

I'm not being spiteful, I'm trying to figure out how to live with this new reality.

Before we were living that Huxtable life. But now where are we? I know where you are and I know where I am, but where are WE?

calming breaths even as water burned my eyes. There was comfort in the truth, no matter how difficult.

It was the scent of my mother and it couldn't be broken down into parts.

Then he surprised me by laying his head in my lap, reaching for my arms and closing them around himself like a blanket.

You don't want no woman that brandished a firearm, son.

No book before its time.

my mentor cautioned me that I should always write about "people and their problems, not problems and their people.

if you lose it very time he tries to clean, you're encouraging him to lie.

she looks me up and down like I might be holding her grandbabies hostage in my body.

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. Even when she was a little girl, her voice was like the middle of the night. When she gives a song, it isn't entertaining; rather, it sounds like she is telling secrets that are not hers to reveal.

I can't say whiskey made her beautiful. Davina wasn't a PYT any more than I was a young executive. But I used to be, and she used to be; something of it was left in us both, I think. Davina was everything I ever missed, transformed into warm brown flesh.

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. In poker, you get five cards. Three of them you can swap out, but two are yours to keep: family and native land. I'm not talking bad about Eloe.

But home isn't where you land; home is where you launch.

By the time I covered myself with the crisp sheet and soft blanket, I was tired and ready to close the book on this insane day.

Love is always hard and always worth it.

the wrong race and the wrong time.

Novels, like love, can't be forced. But also like love, novels can enter your life in an instant.