Tayari Jones Quotes
I like straightforward names for my characters. When I get too symbolic with names or places, I start feeling like the characters and the story are less read, and I lose interest.
Quotes to Explore
-
The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.
-
Emotions come first, and in the most direct sense: you first have an emotion and then have a feeling. But also first in the history of the human race, for the ability to have emotions long preceded the ability to have feelings.
-
What I'm trying to do is to write a story. If you take something from it, that's wonderful; if you don't, that's wonderful as well.
-
When you start to think about politicians, you've got to realize these are strange creatures. Other than the fact that they can't tell directions, and they have very strange breeding habits, how do you actually work with these things?
-
90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody's interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.
-
A guy running, you know, fifteen, twenty stallions that are two years of age, never been touched by a human before, and you've got to start castrating them, that's pretty intimidating.
-
Laughing and crying are very similar. They're an extreme response to life. You see it in children who start laughing hysterically.
-
I was also the romantic lead in The Boston Strangler - I was the only one that lived to tell the story - so I called myself the romantic lead.
-
We should start by allowing drilling in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge. It can provide billions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.
-
I would love a bowl of Frosties, but I start the day with something healthier like a bowl of yoghurt or berries.
-
I fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song - you take it all with you.
-
When 5150 came out rock was king. Post Nirvana and Pearl Jam 1996 is a different story.
-
There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited.
-
As a writer, I had learned a lot on 'Margin Call' about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.
-
There is a feeling, when you listen to radio, that it's one person, and they're talking to you, and you really feel their presence as one person.
-
It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.
-
I was told that when I'm dancing, I give off the feeling of a rainy day.
-
I say it with my tongue firmly planted in cheek but there's truth to it - being a comedian is very close to being a therapist. When you're working smaller clubs, you're listening. You're feeling an energy, you're going with a tone but when people start yelling out, you almost start a conversation with people.
-
The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it's a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.
-
Trust, love, what we call sexy, who we trust in a business situation, are all based on how open we are. Openness is bodily openness, muscular relaxation, heart openness as opposed to hiding behind some emotional wall, and spiritual openness, which is actually feeling so fully into the moment that there's no separation between you and the entire moment.
-
Judges have their own point of view, and we have to respect them for that. Rather than feeling bad, we respect our judges and their opinions.
-
Great adventures can start small. Even as small as a sweet. Help yourself to an adventure.
-
Art is always criticized and always an outsider gets the blame.
-
I like straightforward names for my characters. When I get too symbolic with names or places, I start feeling like the characters and the story are less read, and I lose interest.
