Tayari Jones Quotes

25 quotes in 511 categories

• People say, That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn't kill you doesn't kill you. That's all you get.…
• And this is how it started. Just with coffee and the exchange of their long stories. Love can be incremental. Predicaments, too. Coffee can start…
• Abandonment doesn't have the sharp but dissipating sting of a slap. It's like a punch to the gut, bruising your skin and driving the precious…
• I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set…
• If there was ever a time to boil up some grits it is now.
• I guess this is how love is when it comes undone. No matter how tight you knit the stitches, a sharp tug on a loose…
• Dwelling on pain, spending too much time immersed in it, tasting its flavors, fingering its textures--this makes it only more potent.
• It's funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.
• My first novel, Leaving Atlanta, took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that…
• 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…
• I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now, where we match teen girls and writing…
• I don't mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn't a writer. I grew up…
• Remember that the writing itself is good for you. If your story is so close to home that you are afraid to write it, it…
• I take mentoring very seriously and as a result I hardly get any work done during the school year.
• Adolescence is a modern construct and very American in so many ways.
• I am always urging my students to honor their writing practice, to set up a schedule.
• I do have a sister - I have two sisters.
• I was kind of an invisible girl when I was young.
• Secret families are really the bedrock issue of Western literature.
• The adolescent protagonist is one of the hallmarks of American literature.

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