Top 120 Tia Williams Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Over the years, during lazy daydreams, she’d sometimes allowed herself to fantasize about running into him. But in her thoughts, they’d still been kids. She couldn’t imagine them relating to each other as adults. Whatever Shane sparked in her, she’d thought she’d outgrown. But they weren’t who they used to be. They were better.”

— Tia Williams

52. “I just keep waiting for it not to hurt so bad. Every time I meet a woman, I want her to be you. And these sweet, pretty, smart girls fail so miserably. There’s nothing wrong with them; they’re just not you. You know that ‘other half’ people spend their life looking for? I already found her. She’s somewhere watching Inside the Actor’s Studio and eating yellow Skittles without me. I know who she is. But I can’t have her.”

— Tia Williams

53. “Maybe that’s what real adult love was. Being fearless enough to hold each other close no matter how catastrophic the world became.”

— Tia Williams

54. “I thought you were a problem that needed solving. But you don’t need solving. You need understanding.”

— Tia Williams

55. “Know why I have nice skin? No man stressing me out.”

— Tia Williams

56. “If you listen hard enough, you can tell what a person needs from you. And if you give them what they need, you’ve got a friend for life.”

— Tia Williams

57. “The burden isn’t on me to explain it, Rich. The burden’s on y’all to fix it. Good luck.”

— Tia Williams

58. “Also, she missed her mom. They’d just chatted on the phone, and she’d sounded so serious. And distracted, as if she were speaking to Audre from galaxies away. Audre knew her mother, so she knew what was wrong. What was missing. And there was only one person who could help.”

— Tia Williams

59. “I just won’t fold myself up tiny so as not to put off no man.”

— Tia Williams

60. “Are you speaking metaphorically,” asked Cece, “or are you dating a man named Alone?” “You can’t be serious.” “My doorman is a SoundCloud rapper named Sincere. One never knows.”

— Tia Williams

61. “He’d forgotten, because he had no experience with being needed.”

— Tia Williams

62. “Religion. Hmm. I guess it’s like fire. In good hands, fire can be used to do positive things, like keep you warm. Make s’mores. In bad hands, it can burn a witch at the stake. Lynch a Black body.”

— Tia Williams

63. “She’d hoped he’d be her forever guy. She was so tired of starting over with a new man every couple years, only to be abandoned for unspecified reasons. When bad things happened over and over, it was a sign. God was telling you to change. Your attitude, your hair, your address.”

— Tia Williams

64. “Acting sober is an art,” he explained. “The trick is to say very little and be very still. And if you do that too well, sleep inevitably happens.”

— Tia Williams

65. “When we were together, I felt like someone else had stolen all your smiles before me.”

— Tia Williams

66. “You don’t date, Mommy. What even is your type, the Invisible Man?”

— Tia Williams

67. “Shane was the memory she couldn’t escape. The bridge she’d never burn. The.”

— Tia Williams

68. “And then, for the first time ever, Shane ignored what he desperately wanted and made his first truly responsible decision.”

— Tia Williams

69. “Listen, caring about things don’t maek you soft. IT makes you alive.”

— Tia Williams

70. “But inexplicable things happened to him, and Shane accepted life’s oddities. He didn’t know if this made him an adventurer or an idiot, but one thing was true – nothing interesting ever came from a clear path of rationality.”

— Tia Williams

71. “Prison is the school of the unlearned lesson.”

— Tia Williams

72. “This new Eva, the free Eva, was tired of being rattled by life. How long had she lived being too terrified to show her real self? There was power in showing the messiness of her life and what it took to hold it together.”

— Tia Williams

73. “I know you twist history to make things easier for you, but I’ve never made you do anything. Do you ever think about your role in all of this?”

— Tia Williams

74. “She remembered that they were never sober. Shane drank to seek oblivion; she stayed high to outrun pain. They did it together – but she cut herself in private.”

— Tia Williams

75. “Don’t you want to know why?” With twinkly eyes, he said, “Tell me later.” “Bold of you to assume there’ll be a later.” “Bold of you to assume there won’t be.”

— Tia Williams

76. “There’s an alternate universe where I never left.”

— Tia Williams

77. “I know too much,” he said, his words weighted with old pain. The kind that makes a home on the fringes of your thoughts forever.”

— Tia Williams

78. “I like being single,” Eva continued quietly. “I don’t want anyone to have to really see me.”

— Tia Williams

79. “The girl threw up a Black Power fist and bounced.”

— Tia Williams

80. “Shane and Eva were her writer children. And as their mama, she had a right to get to the bottom of their situationship.”

— Tia Williams

81. “It was an old story, really. Women telling the truth, and no one believing them.”

— Tia Williams

82. “Eva turned to face him. “I’m so sorry.” “No, I’m sorry. That’s what I came to New York to say. I’m sorry I broke my promise. And I’m sorry I didn’t find you the second I was released. But by then, you’d published your first book. You were a success, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Back then, I was convinced that I ruined.”

— Tia Williams

83. “It sounds like it tastes good.”

— Tia Williams

84. “And know this: the villain depends on who’s telling the story.”

— Tia Williams

85. “She kept shifting it around her hips. It was a sample-size 2, which was really a 0, and Eva was a size 4 but a PMS 6.”

— Tia Williams

86. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go home and feed my two kittens, Growth and Metamorphosis.”

— Tia Williams

87. “How,” she started, “do you explain this to people?” “I don’t.” “That simple, huh?” Eva was awed. “It’s ours,” he said simply. “Sacred.”

— Tia Williams

88. “They both giggled, until they’d forgotten what was funny. Eventually, they lapsed into comfortable silence, enjoying the sun.”

— Tia Williams

89. “But she’d never wanted kids. Books were her kids.”

— Tia Williams

90. “Please take no offense, but our music was revolutionary before whites liked it, and it will be after.”

— Tia Williams

91. “Nooo. Not today, of all days. She’d begged her mom not to invite her boyfriends over. And Lizette always assured her that she’d stop, that their home would be a no-man zone.”

— Tia Williams

92. “Well the world may be in shambles around us, said Ricki, ever optimistic, but we’re still creating through it. We’ll always have art, love, stories, adventures, beauty...”

— Tia Williams

93. “Every time one of her terribly dysfunctional relationships imploded, she was confused and stunned. And then with fresh hope, she’d fling herself at another jackass.”

— Tia Williams

94. “And here’s what’s really good,” continued Belinda. “The publishing industry has a hard time processing Black characters unless we’re suffering.”

— Tia Williams

95. “Because even bigger than her sadness was her determination.”

— Tia Williams

96. “Eva bit her lip, trying to keep her guilty, thrilled smile from spreading. Shane. She’d divulged all to him.”

— Tia Williams

97. “These partygoers hadn’t been the cool kids growing up. They’d spent their adolescence buried in art books, scrawling poems into steno pads during recess, living full stories in their heads. Distracted by their artistic micro-obsessions, many forgot to learn how to engage with the world. They were too busy studying life, storing up their notes to use later in a novel, a song, a script, a painting. They were observers, not joiners.”

— Tia Williams

98. “Your vibe attracts your tribe, babe.”

— Tia Williams

99. “The concept of ‘father’ just feels made up, like Santa or the Easter Bunny.”

— Tia Williams

100. “Lizette didn’t lay eyes on Audre till she was two. It was cruel. She hadn’t raised her daughter to have such ghastly manners. But in the end, maybe Genevieve had been right to sever ties. Genevieve was Eva now, and she and Audre were both thriving. Everything turns out the way it oughta, she thought.”

— Tia Williams