Ayana Mathis Quotes & Sayings

Bell lifted her hand to her chest. Her heart beat so quickly. She was floating out on a tide of agony, and soon she would be carried so far she'd never come back. — Ayana Mathis

I probably always will be. But I've been mad all my life, and I finally figured out that I couldn't keep carrying that with me. It's too heavy and I'm too tired. Time will take care of it, like it does everything else. — Ayana Mathis

Fine doesn't call before dawn. — Ayana Mathis

She had been with her share of schemers and men who were forever building castles in the sky. All of those dreams made out of clouds; when it rained - and it always did - they were left with nothing but the soggy shirts on their backs. — Ayana Mathis

It seems to me that everything is on its way to becoming something else, giving itself up in the service of another. In — Ayana Mathis

Some things you can't apologize for, you just have to try to get around them," Hattie replied. "For your own sake too, so you can have a little peace. — Ayana Mathis

All of them
Hattie and Willie and Evelyn and even ruined, crazy Walter
were little lights; sparks flying upward in dark places, trying to stay alight though they were compelled toward ash. They were nearly extinguished one moment, then orange and luminous the next. — Ayana Mathis

There were too many disappointments to name and too much heartbreak. They were beyond punishment or forgiveness, beyond what they had inflicted on each other, beyond love. — Ayana Mathis

One thing I am learning is to slow down. Multitasking is great, but I when try to do everything at warp speed I just end up with typos and stress. — Ayana Mathis

Half of what's wrong with people today is that they ain't got no place to go that makes them peaceful. I don't reckon you got no place like that. — Ayana Mathis

I really, deeply believe in the primacy of character. I believe that my job as a writer is to put a believable human being on a page. — Ayana Mathis

Somebody always wants something from me," she said in a near whisper. "They're eating me alive. — Ayana Mathis

At home they thought of white people as a vague but powerful entity
like the forces that control the weather, that capable of destruction, that hidden from view. — Ayana Mathis

I know all of her moods and the way they play across her features, but I am still awed at the configuration of lips and eyes and cheeks that make up that face that I love. Out of all of the others I could have loved. My Sissy. — Ayana Mathis

No one could tell her why things had turned out as they had, not August or the pastor or God himself. — Ayana Mathis

Hattie wanted to give her babies names that weren't already chiseled on a headstone in the family plots in Georgia, so she gave them names of promise and of hope, reaching-forward names, not looking-back ones. — Ayana Mathis

The butterflies were still alive in the Mason jar. August turned to her and said, "We gon' make it through, Hattie." She snatched the jar from the table and hurled it at the wall behind August. The two of them watched the butterflies, stunned and struggling in the broken glass.O — Ayana Mathis

It was important to do what needed doing, no matter the day or the circumstance. — Ayana Mathis

She wished the man outside really were Thomas, so she and Billups could again have the same enemy and the same fear.O — Ayana Mathis

I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access. — Ayana Mathis

There is a particular kind of afternoon sun that exists only in autumn. A golden light drapes itself over the world of that hour. It falls through the afternoon sky, fine and faint as a swirl of cigarette smoke caught in the wind, nearly transparent. So sweet, that light, insisting softly, goldly against the windows. — Ayana Mathis

God doesn't come to sit on the porch and sip lemonade. He comes to take over. — Ayana Mathis

His soul was susceptible to god's whimsy, just as his body was susceptible to any opportunistic thing that might hurt it. If he'd known how to pray, Six would have asked God to take his gift away. — Ayana Mathis

Down the hall the children slept three to a bedroom; Hattie could almost hear them growing, their wrists lengthening and poking out beyond the cuffs of their sleeves, their feet outgrowing their shoes, their shoulders widening and pulling the fabric of their coats taut. — Ayana Mathis

The correlations between real life experience and the storylines in novels are never as direct or simple as they might seem. — Ayana Mathis

I make a point of seeing the sunset. Even if I am on duty, I go on deck to watch the sky darken into twilight. It helps me remember that this strange place is still the earth, and I am still on it. — Ayana Mathis

Fiction writing is an act of imagination, lived experience is secondary in many ways, writing a novel really is all about inventing worlds and people. — Ayana Mathis

I've been writing all my life. Even though I didn't have sort of careerist aspirations as a writer, it was very much my identity. — Ayana Mathis

Six wasn't sure religion was any more than a lot of people caught up in a collective delirium that disappeared the minute they stepped out of the church doors and onto the street. — Ayana Mathis

I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and that it's all really mystical and mysterious. In reality, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. — Ayana Mathis

I take in great lungfuls of air. Atom by atom, the oxygen enters my blood and pumps in waves through my veins; it is tidal, this pumping blood. My heart beats mightily. If I ran any faster, gravity would loose its claims on my ankles, and my feet would pedal into the air. — Ayana Mathis

God had indeed set it twirling and twisting every which way when he put black people to owning their own kind. — Ayana Mathis

The thing to do was to insult her or slap her or run her out into the night. She'd left him with all their children. She was holding another man's baby in her arms. Anyone would agree that he ought to do something terrible to her, but she had been gone fifteen hours, and in that fifteen hours his life had crumbled like a lump of dry earth. — Ayana Mathis

Voice isn't fixed or unmalleable, it adapts to the characters you are creating and the story being told. I suppose in some way that's true in life - a little flexibility goes a long way. — Ayana Mathis

It seemed to him that he could never get a proper grip on any of the beauty in this world. — Ayana Mathis

At last, her mother and sisters exited the station and came to stand next to her. "Mama," Hattie said. "I'll never go back. Never. — Ayana Mathis

Pride brought down a lot of folks. One of these days you gon' have to turn around and look at whatever it is you running from. — Ayana Mathis

I couldn't stand to be a fool a second time,' Hattie said. 'I couldn't stand it. — Ayana Mathis

She had her nose so high in the air she could smell the birds farting. — Ayana Mathis

Hattie had never been easy to love. She was too quiet, it was impossible to know what she was thinking. And she was angry all of the time and so disdainful when her high expectations weren't met. — Ayana Mathis

I try to look for the beauty in things. — Ayana Mathis

In Georgia, there was a eucalyptus tree in the wood across from Hattie's house, but the plant had been hard to come by in the Philadelphia winter. — Ayana Mathis

Even if you don't feel like sitting down to write or working on that big proposal, or whatever it is, just show up anyhow and the rest will follow. — Ayana Mathis

The Lord brings us into this world naked, but I don't suppose he means us to stay that way — Ayana Mathis

I wonder if the brass understands that people are getting killed. — Ayana Mathis

I have looked at my father many times and wondered how he could stand knowing he was my mother's ruin. He was too weak to leave her. Mother should have thrown him out and saved them both, like Sissy was saving the two of us. — Ayana Mathis

It seemed to him that every time he made one choice in his life, he said no to another. All of those things he could not do or be were huddled inside of him; they might spring up at any moment, and he would be hobbled with regret. — Ayana Mathis

It had been easy to be comfortable with each other when there was a glass wall between them. — Ayana Mathis

Maybe we have only a finite amount of love to give. We're born with our portion, and if we love and are not loved enough in return, it's depleted. — Ayana Mathis

My God, but you are hard to love," Hattie — Ayana Mathis

Hattie's children died in the order in which they were born: first Philadelphia, then Jubilee. — Ayana Mathis

But she was gone, and Hattie wanted to give her babies names that weren't already chiseled on a headstone in the family plots in Georgia, so she gave them names of promise and of hope, reaching forward names, not looking back ones. The — Ayana Mathis

Hattie was like a lake of smooth, silvered ice, under which nothing could be seen or known. — Ayana Mathis

Hattie clambered from the train, her skirt still hemmed with Georgia mud, the dream of Philadelphia round as a marble in her mouth and the fear of it a needle in her chest. — Ayana Mathis

One of the things that writers worry about is finding a voice. I don't think it's a thing that you find so much as it is something that comes to you, or that presents itself. — Ayana Mathis

His pain was his most precious and secret possession, and Six held on to it as fiercely as a jewel robbed from a corpse. — Ayana Mathis

You act like your whole life was one long January afternoon." Lawrence said. "It wouldn't do any good to go around with my head in the clouds. — Ayana Mathis

I think that people have some sort of vision that everybody is moving towards perfection, and that there is some sort of set steps or something like that that you can move through to get to that place, and that that's sort of the project of being alive. — Ayana Mathis

I think that the project of being alive is to be alive. So there will always be twists and turns and steps forward and steps back, but that's just your life. There is no sort of place at which to arrive, and I think that the more one focuses on an end point, the harder it is to get there. It's like the horizon, sort of ever receding, ever receding, ever receding. — Ayana Mathis

Now, we struggle, brothers and sisters, and we strive. We have our trials and our tribulations but we are blessed. We go to bed, praise Jesus, and we rise again in the morning. And if that's not a blessing, I don't know what is. — Ayana Mathis

The critics and the reviewers are more frightening than anything else! — Ayana Mathis

Six understood in that instant that he had something the ministers wanted and it had given him power among them. He had never been powerful among men. — Ayana Mathis

I think she's really finished with me this time. I'll never be finished with her. — Ayana Mathis

I try to find the beauty in things. On dark days I sit in my armchair looking at clouds and I am awed at how rain is made. — Ayana Mathis

All of us, writers and non-writers alike, have incredible well-springs of personal experience and history. And we also have imagination - which I think is a kind of human miracle. — Ayana Mathis

Mother was a beautiful young woman; the house was too plain, too small to contain her. I watched her; for the first time I understood that she had an inner life that didn't have anything to do with me or my brothers and sisters. — Ayana Mathis

You ought to go now before she wakes up, Hattie said. She handed her daughter to Pearl. I'm in the floor, she thought. — Ayana Mathis