quotes by Edward P. Jones

"We are all worthy of one another."
— Edward P. Jones (The Known World)

"(Her husband's departure ...)had picked Mildred up by the hair and dropped her down at the doorstep of insanity.
From "Butterfly on F street""
— Edward P. Jones

"She went through her memory for the time, for the day, she and and her husband told him all about what he should and should not do. No goin out into them woods without Papa or me knowin about it. No steppin foot out this house without them free papers, not even to go to the well or the privy. Say your prayers every night...Pick the blueberries close to the ground, son. Them the sweetest, I find. If a white man say the trees can talk, can dance, you just say yes right along, that you done seen em do it plenty of times. Don't look them people in the eye. You see a white woman riding toward you, get way off the road and go stand behind a tree. The uglier the white woman, the farther you go and the broader the tree. But where, in all she taught her son, was it about thou shall own no one, havin been owned once your own self. Don't go back to Egypt after God done took you outa there."
— Edward P. Jones (The Known World)

"Calvin had long been uneasy in his own person and so lived to put everyone else at ease."
— Edward P. Jones (The Known World)

"He knew he was going to die but he thought this little thing might provide him with a nothing stool way off in the corner of heaven reserved for fools, people too stupid to come out of the rain. People got to that corner by heaven's back door."
— Edward P. Jones (The Known World)

"Best hurry, he thought. Best get outa this weather. He wanted to die but he really didn't want to catch a cold to do it."
— Edward P. Jones (The Known World)