Edward P. Jones
Edward P. Jones
Edward Paul Jonesis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
choose days island knew might perhaps religious stranded useful
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.
home
I'm not afraid of my own company. I was made to be at home.
caused climate happened people perhaps system time
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.
aunt bill civil cousins passed rights south stay swim
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.
came dungeon guard hundred illiterate meals paper sentence sincerity spare thrown twice
I have said with as much sincerity as I can muster that if I were thrown into a dungeon with a sentence of one hundred years, with my only company being an illiterate guard who came twice a day with meals but who never spoke, I would still write - on coarse toilet paper in the dark if I could spare it.
family takes using
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.
along pick riding sudden
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.
mother book black-and-white
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.
awful humans human-beings
I'm fascinated by the awful, awful things that human beings do to each other.
mother jobs growing-up
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 cant be without a job for any length of time, or you will be without anything.
fiction facts steps
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.
running america people
Whenever people in that part of the world asked Patterson about the wonders of America, the possibilities and the hope of America, Patterson would say that it was a good and fine place but all the Americans were running it into the ground and that it would be a far better place if it had no Americans.
long ease uneasy
Calvin had long been uneasy in his own person and so lived to put everyone else at ease.
baby men blow
The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.