Edward P. Jones

My mother worked in the white world, but I lived almost exclusively in a black world. I don't think I had ever…

— Edward P. Jones

Those of us with this ancient compulsion to tell stories sometimes start with a single kernel of something.

— Edward P. Jones

In the summer of 1964, my sister and I went to South Ballston, Virginia, to stay with my aunt and her kids.…

— Edward P. Jones

“You too heavy a man for me to carry...I done carried heavy men and I know how they can break your back.…

— Edward P. Jones

“Without all that young stuff, Stamford, you will die a slave. And it will not be a pretty die.”

— Edward P. Jones

We are all worthy of one another.

— Edward P. Jones

“She went through her memory for the time, for the day, she and and her husband told him all about what he…

— Edward P. Jones

“A man does not learn very well, Mr. Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along.…

— Edward P. Jones

From my apartment in Arlington, I could see Washington. It was always nice to be near home.

— Edward P. Jones

Until I can read a story physically, with the eyes, it doesn't seem to exist for me.

— Edward P. Jones

“God is in his heaven and he don't care most of the time. The trick of life is to know when God…

— Edward P. Jones

I'm fascinated by the awful, awful things that human beings do to each other.

— Edward P. Jones

Something happened during the 1980s - perhaps the political climate of that time - that caused me to ask how a people…

— Edward P. Jones

“When Augustus Townsend died in Georgia near the Florida line, he rose up above the barn where he had died, up above…

— Edward P. Jones

I never like to put myself in the stories; in 'Lost in the City,' there are fourteen stories, and there's only one,…

— Edward P. Jones

“His droning on and on was a bit soothing, far more than Calvin’s hand on her arm or the children’s smiling up…

— Edward P. Jones

I write a lot in my head. I've never been driven to write things down.

— Edward P. Jones

The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it…

— Edward P. Jones

“Priscilla watched her husband as he slowly drifted into sleep, and once he was asleep, she took hold of his hand and…

— Edward P. Jones

When you grow up with a mother who has to wash dishes and clean hotel rooms, you know the importance of having…

— Edward P. Jones

The people I grew up around, almost all of them had been born and raised in the South. And, you know, they…

— Edward P. Jones

“[He] went on to tell her that certain work songs made the work a little easier, but that there were others, depending…

— Edward P. Jones

“Augustus wasn’t driving the wagon very fast because he had his family together again and all time was now spread out before…

— Edward P. Jones

A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.

— Edward P. Jones

My father was Catholic, and my mother wanted me to go to Catholic school. That's what I did in first grade. But…

— Edward P. Jones