Top 100 Tia Williams Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Which one of you is the turtle?” “I’m sorry?” asked Eva. “Which one of you is the turtle? You know, the one who leaves and comes back and leaves again, while the other waits?” she said, spinning on her heel. “It’s a metaphor, writers. Think about it.”

— Tia Williams

52. “Just be kind to yourself.”

— Tia Williams

53. “Moving to New York was about reinvention. If you didn’t want that, you stayed in Kenosha, Wisconsin.”

— Tia Williams

54. “Shane was her lighthouse. If he went dark, she’d be lost, treading black water forever.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

56. “Years ago, she’d thought love wasn’t real unless it drew blood.”

— Tia Williams

57. “Have you ever been in a Walmart?” asked Eva. “Physically, yes. Spiritually, no.”

— Tia Williams

58. “Now, I never got married. No, no, no, I ain’t one of those funny ladies. I just won’t fold myself up tiny so as not to put off no man.”

— Tia Williams

59. “How do you finish a love story that you... you never wanted to end?”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

63. “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

64. “Finally, Shane angled the microphone up and spoke five words. “This is for the misfit.”

— Tia Williams

65. “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

66. “All these years.” Genevieve’s voice sounded reedy. “All these years, I thought he was a coward. A liar. I hated him.” “Well, who’s to hate if it ain’t him?”

— Tia Williams

67. “When someone went too long without touch, they became hypersensitive to the slightest graze. There was truth to it. Last weekend, Eva had almost had an orgasm when her hairstylist shampooed her. And her hairstylist was a grandmother of six.”

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

73. “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

74. “A mantra’s like a magic spell for your brain, telling it to chill.”

— Tia Williams

75. “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

76. “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

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

81. “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

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

84. “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

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

— Tia Williams

86. “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

87. “Books were her kids.”

— Tia Williams

88. “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

89. “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

90. “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

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

— Tia Williams

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

— Tia Williams

93. “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

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

— Tia Williams

95. “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

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

— Tia Williams

97. “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

98. “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

99. “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

100. “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