67 Quotes by Edward P. Jones

It was twilight and the stars were quite evident in the sky. The moon, still low, was behind Skiffington and only Barnum could see it.

I told you to stop, dammit! Nigger, all I wanted was for you to stop." Augustus heard him and he wanted to say that that was the biggest lie he had ever heard in his life, but he was dying and words were precious.

Ralph's people in Washington were not as bad as he had always thought. The drunkard had found God a week after a Fourth of July and had said good-bye to the bottle for good. Washington was good to the old man's bones.

[He] went on to tell her that certain work songs made the work a little easier, but that there were others, depending upon the time of day, that dragged a body down, so 'you just gotta be careful with your songs and your hummin' and whatnot.

They treat colored people like kings and queens in Washington, cause thas where the president lives. Would they treat colored people anything but good in a city where the president hangs his hat and pets his dog and snores besides Mrs. President every night? Now would they?

A woman born to teaching wakes in the morning desperate to be near her pupils. I was that way. I am that way. I have told my own children and my husband to put on my grave marker 'Mother' and 'Teacher.' That before all else, even my own name. And if the chiseler has room, to have him put 'Wife.' 'Wife' below my name. 'Dutiful Wife,' if he can manage it.

The wonderful thing about writers like [James] Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our eyes from the page to keep from being spirited away.

People, I have learned, have a way of taking root in one's still-developing mind without our knowing it, especially people, like [James] Baldwin, who live in the world of words.

It ain't right," Celeste said. "It just ain't right to go and do what they bought you for. Why make it easy?