Tayari Jones Quotes

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

Beauty doesn't matter because in the end, we all lose our looks and all we have is our heart.

It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.

He who cannot see the beautiful side is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover; he cannot lift his mind and his heart so high as goodness.

We've grown up with American movies. Not to say that American movies - or movies that have been based in Watts, Compton, or Inglewood - are a 100% true depiction of that world. But also you have inner-city London, and the foundations are pretty much the same. Especially me, growing up in Southeast London, in Peckham.

I don't feel the pressure to deliver an unrealistically great man to the screen; I just want to be honest to who my character is on the page. If I can reflect that and put some heart into him and make him real, then I think I've done my job, and I think that people will like who he is.

What interests Sam Mendes are characters and relationships, and he was a genius at giving you the freedom to create the type of character you want, and also to explore and have fun with your fellow actors. For him, characters and relationships are really the heartbeat of the film, and then the action is the backdrop. By developing the characters, he makes you care that much more about the action and going on a journey with the characters.

Cute's good. But cute only lasts for so long, and then it's, 'Who are you as a person?' Look at the heart. Look at the soul. Look at how the guy treats his mother and what he says about women. How he acts with children he doesn't know. And, more important, how does he treat you?

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

Let's be honest, any show will live or die based on how good the characters are, how good the actors are, how complicated the relationships are, how grounded they are and how much heart they have.

To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts — when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break — at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent — I am ever tender and true. (Mr Rochester to Jane)

People can't see what's in your heart - they can only see what you do.

Though, technically, I'm shooting on location, my films are actually based inside a woman's heart. I think women are more emotional than men, and that's a thread I've explored in all my films. When I see TV these days, I'm shocked at how all the main women characters are portrayed as evil. Women are the foundation of everything, and they deserve to be treated that way on camera.

I love thee for a heart that’s kind--not for the knowledge in thy mind.

He who's never loved cannot be good.

... what's in a person's heart and soul will not likely be changed by the ability to command a helicopter to land on the South Lawn.

Sorrow is better than laughter; for, by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better.

There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.

What is genius or courage without a heart?

Strength enough to build a home, Time enough to hold a child, Love enough to break a heart

To measure a leader, put a tape around his heart, not his head.

The greatness of a person lies in his heart, not in his head; that is intellect.

The people knew what had made them human. It was not their shortcomings, but their hearts.

It depends on the story and the filmmaker. And it depends on the character, and the heart and soul of the person that I see on the page, and if it resonates with something that I think I can summon in myself.

I love Kimberly Peirce. Incredibly intense is a good way of describing her. Brutally honest. Really sharp. She's a director for actors. That's what she's best at, sitting down with an actor and just getting to the heart of what a scene is. And getting to the heart of not just what the scene is and the character is, but what you are, and how to build that bridge between the "me" and the character, and those emotions.