Top 100 Tayari Jones Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Yes means yes and no means no, but what is the meaning of silence?”

— Tayari Jones

2. “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. Sometimes, you just have to hope that’s enough.”

— Tayari Jones

3. “Water always finds its own level.”

— Tayari Jones

4. “What happens to you doesn’t belong to you, only half concerns you. It’s not yours. Not yours only.”

— Tayari Jones

5. “How did we end up here? My key works, but you won’t let me in.”

— Tayari Jones

6. “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 air from your body.”

— Tayari Jones

7. “I like my mimosas like I like my men... transparent.”

— Tayari Jones

8. “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.”

— Tayari Jones

9. “When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It’s an emotional illusion, I guess.”

— Tayari Jones

10. “If there was ever a time to boil up some grits it is now.”

— Tayari Jones

11. “I do have a sister – I have two sisters.”

— Tayari Jones

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

— Tayari Jones

13. “That’s your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.”

— Tayari Jones

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

— Tayari Jones

15. “But more women should be selfish,” she said. “Or else the world will trample you.”

— Tayari Jones

16. “You can never really unlove somebody. Maybe it changes shape, but it’s there.”

— Tayari Jones

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

— Tayari Jones

18. “I don’t believe that blood makes a family; kin is the circle you create, hands held tight.”

— Tayari Jones

19. “One is the left shoe and the other is the right. They are the same but not interchangeable.”

— Tayari Jones

20. “Gloria once told me that your best quality is also your worst.”

— Tayari Jones

21. “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 thread will transform your warm sweater into a mangled heap of yarn that you can’t reuse or repair.”

— Tayari Jones

22. “A woman doesn’t always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Everyone of us has lain down for a reason that was not love.”

— Tayari Jones

23. “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?”

— Tayari Jones

24. “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 left at least 29 African-American children dead.”

— Tayari Jones

25. “Dwelling on pain, spending too much time immersed in it, tasting its flavors, fingering its textures – this makes it only more potent.”

— Tayari Jones

26. “It was a wonderful feeling to be grown and yet young. To be married but not settled. To be tied down yet free.”

— Tayari Jones

27. “When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.”

— Tayari Jones

28. “There are too many loose ends in the world in need of knots.”

— Tayari Jones

29. “Human emotion is beyond comprehension, smooth and uninterrupted, like an orb made of blown glass.”

— Tayari Jones

30. “Maybe that’s what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person.”

— Tayari Jones

31. “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 probably means you need to write it.”

— Tayari Jones

32. “Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience.”

— Tayari Jones

33. “You don’t know how demoralizing it is to be a man with nothing to offer a woman.”

— Tayari Jones

34. “Sometimes when you like where you end up, you don’t care how you got there.”

— Tayari Jones

35. “I don’t want to jeopardize what I have with her over a dream that may not even fit me anymore. She and I are enough to be a family. If you need a kid to keep you together, then how together are you?”

— Tayari Jones

36. “Looking back on it, it’s like watching a horror flick and wondering why the characters are so determined to ignore the danger signs. When a spectral voice says, GET OUT, you should do it. But in real life, you don’t know that you’re in a scary movie. You think your wife is being overly emotional. You quietly hope it’s because she’s pregnant, because a baby is what you need to lock this thing in and throw away the key.”

— Tayari Jones

37. “Yesterday I sat under the hickory tree in the front yard. It’s the only place where I find rest and just feel fine. I know fine isn’t a lot, but it’s rare for me these days. Even when I’m happy, there is something in between me and whatever good news comes my way. It’s like eating a butterscotch still sealed in the wrapper.”

— Tayari Jones

38. “But how you feel love and understand love are two different things.”

— Tayari Jones

39. “The magic that came from lips could be as cruel as children and as erratic as a rubber ball ricocheting off concrete.”

— Tayari Jones

40. “The adolescent protagonist is one of the hallmarks of American literature.”

— Tayari Jones

41. “A marriage is more than your heart, it’s your life. And we are not sharing ours.”

— Tayari Jones

42. “She explained that convenience, habit, comfort, obligation – these are all things that wear the same clothing as love sometimes.”

— Tayari Jones

43. “I think the NAACP isn’t recognized enough for all of the work it does, especially in the field of law. They may have faded from view over the last couple of decades, but they are fighting the good fight.”

— Tayari Jones

44. “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.”

— Tayari Jones

45. “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.”

— Tayari Jones

46. “If my childhood were a sandwich, there would be no meat hanging off the bread.”

— Tayari Jones

47. “Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn’t possible. Maybe that’s what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It’s like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It’s the same thing, but it’s not the same at all. That’s the best way I can put it. I look in the mirror and I know it’s me, but I can’t quite recognize myself.”

— Tayari Jones

48. “The vast generosity of women is a mysterious tunnel, and nobody knows where it leads. The writing on the walls spells out trick questions, and as a man, you must know that you cannot reason your way out.”

— Tayari Jones

49. “Everything I do is a love letter addressed to you.”

— Tayari Jones

50. “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.”

— Tayari Jones