Top 70 Tiffany D. Jackson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Well, sometimes the people we love the most can hurt us the most.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

2. “What does it mean when you love and hate someone at the same time?” I ask. He laughs. “It means they family.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

3. “That’s the only advice Momma ever really gave me. Keep praying. God will work everything out. It never occurred to her that maybe she should try to work some things out for herself. Sometimes I wanted to shout, “God’s a little busy, Momma! He can’t find your keys for you all the time!” She was always lazy like that, expecting everyone else to everything for her. God and I share the same problem.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

4. “That’s the thing about finding the right person to love. When someone loves you, all their hang-ups don’t really mean much. Because loving that person is a choice you have to make every day, even when that day isn’t what you expect.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

5. “You, my child, were created in a hurricane, leaving destruction in your wake. You, as they say, are a storm with skin. Death and rebirth will follow you everywhere. How can one man who knows nothing of the weight of blood tame you? For wherever you go, there you are.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

6. “But you’re my mess. I rather have this mess every day than not at all.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

7. “Your bloodline was marinated in rage.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

8. “Our daughter was stalked, preyed upon, and assaulted by a grown man. This is when we need our village the most.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

9. “In this life, you don’t always get what you want, but you must dance through it” -Ms. Manis.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

10. “But when help isn’t invited, it ain’t nothing but an unwanted houseguest.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

11. “Rumors are born with legs that can run a mile in less than a minute. Rumors eat up dreams without condiments. Rumors do not have expiration dates. Rumors can be deadly. Rumors can get you killed.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

12. “Become so drunk on life and love that it blinds you to the hate threatening to drown you. Chew on grief for breakfast, devour aches for lunch, inhale life’s acid, let it burn the costume he has forced upon you.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

13. “There will be pain in carrying this dark secret. A pain you must endure for others and for yourself. This sickly power you hold without hands will eventually burn until you no longer can hide it. You must learn to control it. Or it will control you. But be not a doormat. You can ease the pain by leaving all that you know.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

14. “I know what you’re thinking. How can a whole person, a kid, disappear and no one say a word? Like if the sun just up and left one day, you’d think someone would sound an alarm, right? But Ma used to say, not everyone circles the same sun. I never knew what she meant by that until Monday went missing.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

15. “What yuh may or may not’ve done is not di definition of who yuh really are.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

16. “Kids tend to forget their roots. But roots are always the first to carry you back home.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

17. “But you did save her, Claudia! You saved her from that house for years and you didn’t even know it.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

18. “Yo, Malcolm X said it best. “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

19. “The group home is always muggy, like we live in an old shoe, smelling like corn chips mixed with roach spray. I never call the group home “home.” It’s not a home. No house where you fear for your life can be considered a home.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

20. “Monday worried she’d know about my problem if I got too close to her. But when you’re always cold, it’s easy to be drawn to the sun” -Claudia.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

21. “Everyone in the house knows what I did. Or thinks they know what I did. No one asks though because no one really wants to hear how I killed a baby. They don’t even want to know why I killed a baby. They just want to pretend they know for knowing’s sake.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

22. “I’d kill for something, anything new to read. But I’d never say anything like that at all. Figures of speech are luxurious convicted murders are not allowed to have.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

23. “Trying to reclaim your life is a lot like drowning. You attempt to stay above water as waves of new information hit you sideways, carrying you further into the unknown. People throw life preservers, but the ropes can only reach so far, and once a riptide catches you by the ankle, all you can do is wonder why you ever thought you’d be OK jumping into the deep end, when you could barely manage the shallows.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

24. “You only get one shot at your kids, so you need to hit the bull’s-eye.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

25. “Like the color pink, someone always sees the story different. Some see rose and magenta, and other see coral and salmon. When at the end of the day, it’s just regular old pink.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

26. “I mean, maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all. Maybe just thinking outside the box is how you get further than you ever could dream of.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

27. “You can try all you want to control the wild sea, but in the end, it’ll always do what it wants.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

28. “Music got a funny way of reminding you of what you thought you lost.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

29. “Maybe it’s her way of holding on to... something. After losing so much.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

30. “People throw life preservers, but the ropes can only reach so far, and once a riptide catches you by the ankle, all you can do is wonder why you ever thought you’d be OK jumping into the deep end, when you could barely manage the shallows.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

31. “Something blooms inside my chest and I rip it at the root.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

32. “I suddenly miss the smells and tight quarters of my house. Burning sage, roasting rosemary, and Daddy’s aftershave. I even miss sharing a room with Shea. But I can’t go back home. Parents probably wouldn’t let me through the front door. The only place left for me is with Korey. Plus, he loves me. He needs me. Love is complicated.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

33. “I mean, why would I want to look like the people who stole us from our home, enslaved us, and murdered our ancestors? Why we worshipping white as beautiful when we were queens?”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

34. “Understand, there’s a big difference between baby jail and juvie, where the rest of the girls in the house come from. Juvie is for badass kids who do stuff like rob bodegas, steal cars, maybe stupidly try to kill someone. Baby jail is for kids who’ve done way worse, like me.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

35. “There is a calm in the chaos that most folks don’t see.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

36. “There’s a sadness in his eyes, something left unsaid between his words.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

37. “Once red, she became a starless sky, an endless midnight, a hole in the universe swallowing up the world, leaving everyone blind. Onyx, ebony, jet black.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

38. “Hard to celebrate the day you were born when everybody seems to wish you were never born at all.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

39. “No matter what she did, she could never escape being her father’s greatest mistake. A mistake carved in her features, painted on her skin, knitted in her hair. She would never be good enough or white enough. For him. For the kids at school. For the women in the photos plastered on her closet walls. She hated them.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

40. “I love the dusty particles a fresh colored pencil leaves behind with the first stroke, the sound it makes kissing the page when I’m done filling in voids. That first spot of rich color on a crisp white page, the start of something new.” -Claudia.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

41. “She went into crisis management mode, much like the adult she has been forced to be for most of her life, continuing to hide and protect her mother, because in Mary’s mind she is the mother, and her mother is the child. And a mother always protects her child.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

42. “Mondays are the best days! Like, aren’t you excited about the start of a new week? It’s like a new chapter in a book.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

43. “What a woman wears or doesn’t wear doesn’t give anyone the right to touch them. Well, you know he’s had a rough childhood. Abandoned by his mom, didn’t know his father, raised by his grandma who passed. We’ve all BEEN through a lot but that don’t give you no excuse to abuse girls.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

44. “She didn’t see the thorns sticking out of her sweet actions. Not like I did” -Claudia.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

45. “She took hold of her life, didn’t care what anyone else had to think or say.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

46. “Fish die quick in a tank, Daddy said. We needed room, to flourish, to grow, to go to college, to dive deep and go where they never could.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

47. “If Daddy was a color, he would be a forest green – thick, lush, calm, whispering refreshing wisdom only few could hear. If Michael was a color, he would be bark brown – cocoa, mocha, chocolate, the color of earth. Quiet, supportive, but strong. A softness that love grows from. Together, they are the tree I lean on when I’m weary. The tree I swing from. The tree of life when surrounded by death.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

48. “Ma always drove me to school on the first day, taking off a few hours from the veterans’ canteen. They’d miss her for sure, leaving their kitchen a mess without her running it, but she always says, “You only get one shot at your kids, so you need to hit the bull’s eye.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

49. “Springville was also the type of town where racism was passed down like family jewels.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson

50. “Buddy growls, and I quickly grip his mouth to keep him quiet. But it’s too late. The house stills. The house heard us.”

— Tiffany D. Jackson