You don’t go to the library and walk along and pick out a topic. You are riding the bus, or shopping at Safeway, and all of a sudden the idea comes to you. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
When you grow up with a mother who has to wash dishes and clean hotel rooms, you know the importance of having a job, and you can’t be without a job for any length of time, or you will be without anything. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
Something happened during the 1980s – perhaps the political climate of that time – that caused me to ask how a people would become part of a system that oppresses their own people. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
There are those who write because they believe they have something so marvelous that it will make them famous and wealthy, a lauded commodity who will be invited to a lifetime of cocktail parties. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
Those of us with this ancient compulsion to tell stories sometimes start with a single kernel of something. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
My mother worked in the white world, but I lived almost exclusively in a black world. I don’t think I had ever seen a white teacher until I got to high school. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
I never like to put myself in the stories; in ‘Lost in the City,’ there are fourteen stories, and there’s only one, ‘The First Day,’ about a little girl going to school, that has anything to do with me. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
Perhaps if I knew I would be stranded on an island with but one book, I would choose the Bible. For no religious reason whatsoever, but because of the varieties of stories, which might be useful as the days pass. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
People seem to have trouble with the imagination. They can’t believe that you can just pull things out of your brain like that. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
From my apartment in Arlington, I could see Washington. It was always nice to be near home. Edward P. Jones Read Quote
