Top 100 Tia Williams Quotes (2025 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 won’t fold myself up tiny so as not to put off no man.”

— Tia Williams

53. “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

54. “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

55. “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

56. “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

57. “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

58. “You put me back together when I was in pieces. You gave me confidence, and reminded me that I was lovable. You saved me.”

— Tia Williams

59. “Long ago, she’d learned that life could be bitterly disappointing if allowed. There were blows and stumbles, but your job was to stay interested in the world.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

61. “Shane wasn’t far removed from the man he’d been when he passed out on Gayle King’s shoulder as Jesse Williams announced that he’d won the 2009 NAACP Award for Outstanding Fiction.”

— Tia Williams

62. “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

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

— Tia Williams

64. “All she wanted was to escape this repetitive, redundant hell.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

66. “You don’t promise things to kids and then disappear.”

— Tia Williams

67. “I cut myself. He didn’t do it. And I’d been taking drugs – your drugs, or getting them from your boyfriends – my whole life. I wasn’t your innocent little baby.”

— Tia Williams

68. “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

69. “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

70. “Like when Spotify plays a song you haven’t heard since childhood, and it reminds you who you are. Like “Oh yeah, I’m a person who knows all the words to Will Smith’s ‘Wild Wild West.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

72. “Somehow, he’d snaked into her head and sunk his fangs into her brain, poisoning her with hope. A cruel trick.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

74. “So instead of writing about Gia, a witch who uses her powers to fight for a man, I’m fighting for myself.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

76. “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

77. “The whole afternoon was delicious – so much so that Shane was already nostalgic for it before it had even ended.”

— Tia Williams

78. “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

79. “Books were her kids.”

— Tia Williams

80. “Just say it,” Eva said with a smile. “I’ve never said it. To anyone.” “It won’t hurt, I promise.” Shane grinned, a heart-stopping thing. Then laid his face on her breasts, closing his eyes. “Ready?” he asked. “Ready.” “I love you,” said Shane. “Dramatically, violently, and forever.” She kissed the top of his head, smiling brighter than the sun. “I’ve always loved you,” he whispered. “What a coincidence,” she whispered back. “I’ve always loved you, too.”

— Tia Williams

81. “How do you think she got there?” Shane’s voice was an unsteady mix of regret and pain. “I found her number in your phone, and I called her. When she got to the house, she called the paramedics. And the police. And sent me to prison.” The blood drained from Eva’s face. “No.” “Ask her,” he said gently. “Ask her.”

— Tia Williams

82. “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

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

— Tia Williams

84. “Whether I lose you for years or wake up to your face every morning. I love you. You’re my home. And I want you forever.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

87. “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

88. “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

89. “The first time it happened was when Shane was seven, the terrible event that had sent him hurtling from foster home to foster home, where he learned new crimes, new dysfunctions, new ways to be unloved. That was one piece of it. The other was every time he broke his arm, it hurt, but when it dulled, he’d be shot through with this remarkable insight about himself. It was the only time he saw who he was, crystal clear.”

— Tia Williams

90. “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

91. “No matter how dizzying his professional highs, Shane just couldn’t resist the pull of the tide sweeping him out. Self-destruction was always imminent. No, if writing had been the cure, the past fifteen years would’ve looked very different. He wouldn’t have taken so long to get sober. He might’ve picked a permanent place to live, put down actual roots. Invested in Seamless or Spotify. He’d have gotten serious about the business of living.”

— Tia Williams

92. “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

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

— Tia Williams

94. “Hiii!′ she shouted. ‘I’m Charlii. With two i’s.’ ‘We all have two eyes,’ Shane muttered.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

96. “I just don’t like being alone. Because then I miss you too much. I start wanting to be where I can’t be, and I hate that feeling.”

— Tia Williams

97. “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

98. “In second grade, she’d snuck up on a napping Eva and colored her entire forearm with a highlighter. Because she was “important.”

— Tia Williams

99. “Lizette would never get it. Eva needed her for everything. She’d just never had her.”

— Tia Williams

100. “It sounds like it tastes good.”

— Tia Williams