67 Quotes by Edward P. Jones

I wanted to tell you somethin, and I have been workin my mind so the words will tumble out in a straight line. You know how that can be, John.""I do, Barnum. Just set them words one by one and they'll do fine and we'll get where we got to go.

Henry's funeral lasted a little more than an hour. All the slaves he owned surrounded his family and friends and the hole where they put him. Because Valtims Moffett was late, they started without him. Not knowing when Moffett would arrive, Caldonia decided that there, at the end, God would not hold it against Henry Townsend for not having a proper conductor on his last train.

Robbins, with Dora and Louis on either side, did not speak. A storm came into his head and he missed a good part of the service.

It wasn't bad but he could never make a life of eating the things—God had given him a head full of good teeth, but not a one of them was sweet.

As for the absence of recovery, as for death, there are machines that are not meant for the road.

We leave, we run away and don't realize how much we'll need to go back home one day. The South is like that. It's the worst mama in the world and it's the best mama in the world.

I have been given credit when I should not have. And there have been times when I was denied the credit due me. But that is the fate of many a teacher, the good and the bad.

She called him "William" for the first time when the child was a week old and he did not correct her, came to enjoy the way his name flowed out of her mouth and seemed to swirl about in the air like some meaningless song before his brain registered and told him that was his name.

What we need is a new God. Somebody who knows what the fuck he's doing.