Quotes by Edward P. Jones

About Edward P. Jones:

Edward Paul Jones is an American novelist and short story writer. His 2003 novel The Known World received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We are all worthy of one another.

Edward P. Jones

[He] went on to tell her that certain work songs made the work a little easier, but that there were others, depending upon the time of day, that dragged a body down, so 'you just gotta be careful with your songs and your hummin' and whatnot.

Edward P. Jones

'Jane Eyre,' when I think of that book, it conjures up the best moments of college English courses. Literature is extraordinary, especially when you have a good professor.

Edward P. Jones

I've never been comfortable with the idea of using family and friends in stories. Which is why it takes me longer than something else. Because you make them up out of nothing. Doing that is harder.

Edward P. Jones

I'm not afraid of my own company. I was made to be at home.

Edward P. Jones

From my apartment in Arlington, I could see Washington. It was always nice to be near home.

Edward P. Jones

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

My father was Catholic, and my mother wanted me to go to Catholic school. That's what I did in first grade. But she couldn't afford the payments. I think it must have hurt her a lot, not to be able to give me a Catholic education.

Edward P. Jones

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

The people I grew up around, almost all of them had been born and raised in the South. And, you know, they didn't always go to church, but they lived their lives as if God were watching everything they did.

Edward P. Jones

At first I read mostly books by Southern authors - black and white - because almost all the people I knew were born and raised in the South, starting with my mother. I remember I got a lot of Erskine Caldwell.

Edward P. Jones

My mother relied on her memory to do things because she couldn't read. Part of that was not really knowing numbers.

Edward P. Jones

I don't want to own something that you can't take into your apartment at night.

Edward P. Jones

I don't believe that there is any particular book that influenced any 'career' I might have.

Edward P. Jones

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

I write a lot in my head. I've never been driven to write things down.

Edward P. Jones

In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step.

Edward P. Jones

It just so happens that I was born and raised in Washington. Had I been born in Chicago or San Antonio, the streets and places would have figured into whatever I wrote. Just so happens that it's Washington, D.C.

Edward P. Jones

In the summer of 1964, my sister and I went to South Ballston, Virginia, to stay with my aunt and her kids. They passed the civil rights bill that summer; my cousins were so happy because now they could swim in the pool.

Edward P. Jones

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

Author Bio

  • NameEdward P. Jones
  • DescriptionNovelist, short story writer
  • Born1951
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program