166 Quotes by Tayari Jones

There are too many loose ends in the world in need of knots. You can’t attend to all of them, but you have to try.

Accident of birth is the number one predictor of happiness.’ Once.

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.

But a man who is a father to a daughter is different from one who is a father to a son. One is the left shoe and the other is the right. They are the same but not interchangeable.

Much of life is timing and circumstance, I see that now.

It’s funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.

She swiveled and we kissed like teenagers, making out under the bridge. It was a wonderful feeling to be grown and yet young. To be married but not settled. To be tied down yet free.

White people say, “It beats digging a ditch”; black people say, “It beats picking cotton.

I don’t believe that blood makes a family; kin is the circle you create, hands held tight. There is something to shared genetics, but the question is, what exactly is that something?